# data[].attributes.body
Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell - please read in full

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Orlando, by Virginia Woolf

Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin - please read in full

The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

How to be Both by Ali Smith

# data[].attributes.body
Prostitution, Considered in Its Moral, Social, and Sanitary Aspects

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What was the place of prostitution in 19th-century society? Judith Flanders looks at documents and publications that provide an insight into attitudes towards the profession.

Any discussion of prostitution in the 19th century must begin by saying we have no idea of the numbers involved. In 1791, a police magistrate estimated (and he used the words 'estimate' and 'conjecture') that there were 50,000 prostitutes in London. Yet the word 'prostitute' was not used entirely the way we would use it today, i.e. to refer only to women sold their bodies for sex. In the 19th century, many people used it more widely, to refer to women who were living with men outside marriage, or women who had had illegitimate children, or women who perhaps had relations with men, but for pleasure rather than money. Certainly at least half this figure of 50,000 women consisted of unmarried women living with a partner, while only 20,000 referred to what we would today call prostitutes. Even so, that 20,000-plus is still a much higher figure than the police and court reports of the period indicate, yet by 1817, a figure of 80,000 was being used, which appears to be the 50,000 women (even though half weren't prostitutes at all), extrapolated for the rise in population.

William Acton, a surgeon, said he had 'counted 185 [prostitutes] in the course of a walk home'. His likely route would have taken him past several areas known for streetwalkers, so he may have passed many working women. But short of accosting each one, it seems likely he based his judgements on appearance: women who dressed or behaved in ways men considered inappropriate were deemed to be whores.

From the little information we have, we know that most women who earned their living from selling sex were working class, the majority taking up with men from their own socio-economic background before going out on the streets. The more fortunate, usually in the West End and the prosperous suburbs, worked as prostitutes for a few years, while saving up to get married. One woman said as much: 'she had got tired of service, wanted to see life and be independent; & so she had become a prostitute...She...enjoyed it very much, thought it might raise her & perhaps be profitable'. After three years, she had saved up enough to become the landlady of a coffee-house.

Most, however, spent long hours in the wet and the cold. Some worked in the red-light districts, others in their own neighbourhoods. The dockyards had a large population of prostitutes, and Granby Street, beside Waterloo Station was notorious, for women 'half naked' in the windows. Nancy, in Oliver Twist, is fairly typical in that she works not far from where she lives, in Clerkenwell, a notorious slum-district in London, while her long-term partner, Bill Sikes, has much the same background as her own. Yet, given the constraints of what could be written at the time, we don't know that Nancy is what today we would think of as a prostitute. Her only partner may well be Sikes, and if that is so, she is defined merely through their lack of marriage, like half the women counted by the police-magistrate in the first paragraph. Certainly we never learn that she has clients, or that she walks the streets, or is supported by other men. Whatever the case, Dickens portrays her sympathetically - after all, she dies to save Oliver - which disturbed many of his middle-class readers. Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, was clear: 'I don't like those things...in reality, and therefore I don't wish them represented,' Queen Victoria reported he had said. (She, by contrast, thought the book as a whole was 'excessively interesting'.)

Colour illustrations from 1911 edition of Oliver Twist

Illustration by George Cruikshank depicting Nancy meeting with Mr Brownlow and Rose Maylie, from a 1911 edition of Oliver Twist.

Usage terms: Public Domain

The Favourite Poems of Thomas Hood, with illustrations by Doré

Thomas Hood's poem 'The Bridge of Sighs' is a stereotypical 19 th century dramatisation of prostitution: the 'fallen woman' is fated to die. Illustration by Gustave Doré, 1872.

Usage terms: Public Domain

Dress played a great part in recognizing street-walkers, for otherwise it was hard to tell. 'Walter', the pseudonymous author of an 11-volume erotic memoir, wrote of a women holding up their skirts, 'the common habit of even respectable women'. The only difference was prostitutes 'hold them up just a little higher'. But how high was 'a little higher'? To be sure, Walter had to approach, asking 'Will you come with me?' Only when she agreed, could he be certain.

Touch for Touch: satirical print depicting a prostitute

Satirical illustration by Thomas Rowlandson depicting a woman whom the artist identifies as a prostitute by her clothing: a low bust line, shortened dress and displayed ankles, 19th century.

Usage terms: Public Domain

If prostitutes were only recognisable when they were approached, it meant a lot of respectable women were importuned in the streets, as could be seen from a series of letters in the Times in 1862. A man complained that his daughters had been followed down Oxford Street by 'scoundrels' making lewd suggestions; one reader replied saying she was never accosted, and perhaps the girls' dress or behaviour had encouraged these men? Others joined in, until a magazine suggested that the answer was for women to dress in ugly clothes and keep their heads down.

The English Spy

Illustration by Robert Cruikshank from The English Spy by Charles Molloy Westmacott, 1825-26. Cruikshank and Westmacott use clothing and coded language to imply that these women are prostitutes.

Usage terms: Public Domain

More than anything, a woman's lack of respectability was signalled by her presence in a place of public entertainment. In the late 1830s or early 1840s, a series of small books, The Swell's Night Guides were published, listing the advantages and drawbacks of various theatres for men of pleasure. At one, men were allowed backstage if they tipped the usher, another theatre had boxes furnished with couches, the boxes of a third had doors that locked, to prevent unexpected visitors.

The Swell's Night Guide also gave advice on how to approach actresses. It warned men not to offer them money, but to say they wanted to hire them for private theatricals. This throws a startling light on how Dickens's friends might have perceived his relationship with Ellen 'Nelly' Ternan, for whom Dickens, aged 45, had left his wife: he had hired the 18-year-old actress to perform in private theatricals.

The New Swell's Night Guide

The Swell's Night Guides listed the establishments (the 'introducing houses', 'West-End walks', 'chanting slums' and 'dossing kens') at which men could find prostitutes.

Usage terms: Public Domain

This was the world of heterosexual commercial sex. That there was a homosexual commercial world is certain, but most information we have comes from court cases, due to the fact that homosexuality was illegal at this time. A few dozen report the closures of gay brothels, or pubs, but the most popular locations were the parks and the streets, particularly those near barracks.

'Closing scene at the Old Bailey': newspaper coverage of the Oscar Wilde trial

Newspaper coverage of the trial of Oscar Wilde for 'acts of gross indecency' with another man, from the Illustrated Police News, 4 May 1895.

Usage terms: Public Domain

A diary tells on one such meeting, its author an Englishman living in Venice, but visiting London in the late 1840s. He cruised regularly: 'Fine. Tried my luck once more. I sat in the Park; but so shy that I cd make [illegible] nothing.' 'Fun & Folly...Saw J.B. We went up to Albany St.' Later he filled in the scanty details of his meeting with 'J.B.', a trooper named Jack Brand: 'I saw you in all your beauty, smiling as your gallant charger reared & pranced...And then in the [sentry] Box I spoke to you, & after Parade we met for five minutes, & you told me your name' That evening, 'at the Arch at Hyde Park Corner met my poor Boy,' where they rented a room. The story continued, a casual commercial pick-up transforming into a relationship. But after only a few months Brand died of cholera, leaving his grieving lover behind.

Footnotes

[1] Derek Hudson, Munby, Man of Two Worlds: the life and diaries of Arthur J. Munby, 1828-1910 (London: J. Murray, 1972), p.40.

[2] The Times, 7 January 1862. Note that responses were printed on subsequent days.

[3] 'Rape of the Glances, Saturday Review, 1 February 1862, pp.124-5.

[4] Edward Leeves, Leaves from a Victorian Diary (London: Alison, 1985) , pp. 31, 32, 108, 118.

Judith Flanders is a historian and author who focussed on the Victorian period. Her most recent book The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London was published in 2012.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
What was the place of prostitution in 19th-century society? Judith Flanders looks at documents and publications that provide an insight into attitudes towards the profession. Any discussion of prostitution in the 19th century must begin by saying we have no idea of the numbers involved.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Discover 'The New Swell's Night Guide', an illustrated book on the British Library's Discovering Literature website.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
by Claire Jones

illness helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Worker for poor women's rights, advocate for prostitutes and campaigner against the Contagious Diseases Acts

Overview

Josephine Butler is remembered for her compassion for prostitutes and her tireless championing of poor women and children. Importantly, she is also remembered for her ultimately successful 'crusade' against the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869, which stripped poor women of their legal rights. Josephine's analysis of Victorian women's issues is breathtakingly modern and would not look outdated at the start of the twenty first century. She recognised the distorted and differing affects that the Contagious Disease Actshad on each sex (harming women and privileging men) and interpreted prostitution as 'abuse' or exploitation of one sex by another. Josephine fully recognised the Victorian sexual double standard and challenged men's right to sexual access to prostituted women and children. She achieved major social and legal reforms, eventually getting the Contagious Diseases Acts repealed - all achieved at a time when women did not even have the right to vote.

Early life

Josephine Butler has been described by contemporaries and biographers as beautiful and charismatic. She was born Josephine Elizabeth Grey in Northumberland in 1828 to a wealthy and prominent family. Educated at home, she became acutely aware of injustices within society, in part through the influence of her father who campaigned against slavery. When Josephine married George Butler in 1852, then a tutor at Oxford, she found a partner who shared her concern for fairness and social reform.

Living first at Oxford, then at Cheltenham College, the Butlers had four children, the youngest of whom, Eva, died at the age of six after falling from the banisters at the top of their stairs. Josephine was traumatised by this and it was in the wake of this tragedy that she turned to caring for and campaigning on behalf of prostitutes.

The family moved to Liverpool in 1866 when George, who was by then ordained in the Church of England, was invited to become the new headmaster of Liverpool College. Still suffering from grief and depression, Josephine threw herself into working with vulnerable women, hoping to 'find some pain keener than my own - to meet with people more unhappy than myself'. She began visiting the Brownlow Hill Workhouse (vastly expanding because of the cotton famine) rescuing many young girls and either finding them homes or taking them into her own household. Josephine also worked to set up her own refuge and workshop (making envelopes) where the women could earn money enough to support themselves.

Women and access to higher education

George Butler held progressive ideas and gave active support to the controversial movement for the education of women. It was to him that Anne Jemima Clough (later to become the first head of Newnham College, one of the first colleges for women at Cambridge University) went in 1867 for support when she launched her campaign for higher education for women in Liverpool. Josephine was persuaded to head the committee (The North of England Council for the Higher Education of Women) and she and her husband were active a pioneering scheme of adult education lectures which contributed to the eventual founding of the University in Liverpool. Her involvement in this cause included the editing of a book published in 1869, An Introduction to Woman's Work and Culture, in which she questioned why it is preached that women's 'natural role' is only wifehood and motherhood. Where, she asked, did that leave the two and a half million single women for whom there were not enough husbands to go around? What happened to unmarried women who were not, according to the genteel codes of Victorian society, supposed to support themselves?

Contagious Diseases Acts

In 1870 Josephine became leader of the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Passed in 1864, 1866 and 1869, these Acts targeted women suspected of being prostitutes and, in an attempt to halt the spread of venereal disease amongst the Navy and Armed Forces, forcibly inspected them internally, on a regular basis, to find any hint of contagion. Women were then given a certificate to prove they were free of disease, or incarcerated in a secure lock hospital for 6-9 months until 'clean'. Men were not examined. Josephine immediately understood the Acts' implications and was appalled, believing that they embodied the Victorian sexual double standard.

The Acts were administered by groups of plain clothed policemen (who became known as the 'spy police') whose job was to keep women in their area under surveillance. They harassed prostitutes and working-class women, many of whom were vulnerable and illiterate, with no knowledge of their legal rights; the definition of 'common prostitute' was vague and this gave the police real power. The female body, not the men they serviced, was identified as the primary source of disease and prostitution. As men were not examined but left to spread any disease they carried, the Acts were futile in preventing the spread of contagion.

Women who refused to be examined could be imprisoned as well as infected women. In brothels (which Josephine visited) women had to have tickets with their number, signed by the examining surgeon, showing they were free of disease, which they then showed to the soldiers/punters. Josephine was told by a prostitute in Canterbury, who had chosen to go to prison rather than submit to the examination, that it was unfair because the magistrate who committed her to prison had paid her several shillings to go with him a few days before. Josephine discovered that this was not an isolated case.

Josephine had been rescuing prostitutes in Liverpool, but involvement in something as major and 'unsavoury' as the Contagious Diseases Acts threatened her and her family's respectability, so it is understandable that she hesitated for a few months before taking it on. Her husband supported her, but they both knew that the 'indelicacy' of the subject may have serious consequences for their social standing, and may even threaten George's role as headmaster. They both needed immense courage, and they did suffer some social ostracism. For example, one MP on the floor of the House of Commons referred to Josephine as 'a woman who calls herself a lady', another opined 'I look upon these women who have taken up this matter as worse than the prostitutes'.

To accept leading the campaign for repeal would involve a total break with feminine convention. To mount platforms, to speak at public meetings (and on a subject of such a sexual nature) was not what was expected of respectable female philanthropy. This was men's work, deemed improper for a woman.

The campaign for repeal

The campaign against the Acts lasted some sixteen years. A fund was set up to provide legal representation for women and to look after the children of women locked away. Josephine began holding public meetings to address working class men. She explained the moral and legal effects of the Acts on poor women to their male partners, many of whom had just been given the vote under the 1867 Reform Act. She likened women's position under the Contagious Diseases Acts to slavery and described the campaign for their repeal as like that of the Abolitionist movement.

Jane Jordan, in her biography of Butler, quotes from a speech Josephine made to men in Manchester, in which she said that women turned to prostitution out of:
.... starvation hunger. Two pence, gentlemen, is the price in England of a poor girl's honour (yet with the CDA these girls) are to be no longer women, but only bits of numbered, inspected, and ticketed human flesh, flung by government into the public market.

Josephine and the Ladies National Association argued for repeal of the Acts from several standpoints:

A moral argument, the law was treating women with severity while allowing men to sin with impunity

The Government was waging an unequal war on the weaker sex only

The Acts persecuted working class women, limiting their freedom of movement (if you could afford to travel in a carriage at night you were safe from suspicion)

Women's rights were being taken away to create a sub-class without rights.

The Act did not define 'common prostitute': any woman could be suspected, and no difference was made between an unchaste woman and a criminal

Women were presumed guilty until proved innocent

The political liberty of the whole nation 'depends on the preservation of the rights of all'.

The sexual double standard embodied in the Acts was abhorrent to Josephine. It seemed the State regarded prostitution as a necessity yet condoned male vice. Only women were forced to undergo the degrading examination, and only women were denied their civil rights until they were proved to be free from disease. She refused to countenance what she saw as an assumption that God had created a class of women solely for the use of profligate men - or that working-class women were created to minister to the sexual needs of gentlemen. Josephine outlined these arguments in a book published in 1871 titled The Constitution Violated.

Legacy

The Contagious Diseases Acts were suspended in 1883 and repealed in 1886. After getting the Acts repealed, Josephine continued the campaign in India where women were being virtually forced into prostitution by the British Army.

The debate continued however, but moved to campaign against 'rampant' male sexuality and to promote male chastity. The National Vigilance Association was founded in 1885 which encouraged repressive action against prostitutes by police and vigilante groups. Campaigner Elice Hopkins set up the White Cross Army, with branches throughout the UK, to recruit men to the cause of purity. These organisations comprised part of what came to be called the Social Purity Movement. This was a loose-knit coalition of early feminists and social reformers which set as its goal the containing of male lust and male 'sexual incontinence' in all its forms, from adultery through to prostitution and pornography.

Josephine and George moved to Winchester in 1882 where he took up a canonry at the Cathedral. Josephine soon opened up a new House of Rest for women who temporarily needed care and shelter, and continued her campaigning work. In March 1890 George died and Josephine, in poor health, settled in London, but continued to campaign on behalf of prostitutes in Europe and India. She died in 1906 and is buried in a village in Northumbria. An obituary in The Times described her as 'an almost ideal woman; a devoted wife, exquisitely human and feminine, with no touch in her of the "woman of the platform" though with a great gift of pleading speech, with a powerful mind, and a soul purged through fire'.

Josephine Butler is pictured on a stained glass window in the Lady Chapel at the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool. This window was consecrated in 1910 and depicts 'Noble Women'; alongside Josephine are Queen Victoria, Elizabeth Fry, Annie Jemima Clough and others.

References and further reading

Jane Jordan, Josephine Butler
Nancy Boyd, Josephine butler, Octavia Hill and Florence Nightingale: Three Victorian women who changed their world (Macmillan, 1982)
Helen Mathers, Patron Saint of Prostitutes: Josephine Butler and a Victorian Scandal

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
by Claire Jones illness helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">Worker for poor women's rights, advocate for prostitutes and campaigner against the Contagious Diseases Acts Josephine Butler is remembered for her compassion for prostitutes and her tireless championing of poor women and children.

# data[].attributes.body
'I deny that any one knows or can know, the nature of the two sexes, as long as they have only been seen in their present relation to one another. Until conditions of equality exist, no one can possibly assess the natural differences between women and men, distorted as they have been. What is natural to the two sexes can only be found out by allowing both to develop and use their faculties freely.'

# data[].attributes.body
'The legal subordination of one sex to another – is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a system of perfect equality, admitting no power and privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other'

# data[].attributes.headline
The Subjection of Women (1861, published 1869)

# data[].attributes.subject
The Subjection of Women (1861, published 1869)

# data[].attributes.body
"the legal subordination of one sex to the other – [which] is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality."

# data[].attributes.body
1806 – 1873

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Josephine Butler Memorial Trust website

# data[].attributes.body
1828 – 1906

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Transformative Research Legacies: Josephine Butler - Forgotten Feminist? , 27/05/15

# data[].attributes.headline
Penny Dreadful: Prostitution & Sex in the Victorian Age

# data[].attributes.subject
Penny Dreadful: Prostitution & Sex in the Victorian Age

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Penny Dreadful: Prostitution & Sex in the Victorian Age (Production Blog #7)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.entities[].name
Children Who Built Victorian Britain Part

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Victorian Prostitution - The Great Social Evil

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Prostitution was seen as one of the greatest social problems in the Victorian era, but why did the Victorians think that prostitution was acceptable in some circumstances and not in others? Find out in this week's episode of Victorians Exposed. Victorians Exposed - a series of history vlogs centred around the weird, wonderful, and surprising aspects of Victorian history.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Victorian sexualities | The British Library

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How repressed were the Victorians? Dr Holly Furneaux challenges assumptions about Victorian attitudes towards sex, considering how theorists such as Michel Foucault and Judith Butler have provided new ways of understanding sex and sexuality in the period.

# data[].attributes.body
By the end of the session you will be able to confidently discuss the implications of poverty and prostitution.

# data[].attributes.body
To analyse the texts alongside ideas of women, poverty and prostitution.

# data[].attributes.headline
Link to Mrs Warren's Profession - full text

# data[].attributes.subject
Link to Mrs Warren's Profession - full text