Prostitution- Medical Journal Articles c.1880's

[Archaic]

Hello everyone. While going through c.1880’s Medical Journals I've come across a number of interesting articles on Prostitution. I think others might find them interesting too, so I decided to start posting them here on this thread.

Doctors, Public Health officials and Alienists (early Psychologists/Psychiatrists) all wrote about Prostitution in their scientific journals, but the bleak socio-economic realities of the Victorian Era which forced many women to resort to prostitution simply to survive are seldom mentioned. Instead the medical professionals preferred to analyze prostitution from the ‘Disease’ perspective. Prostitutes are described over and over again as having diseased bodies, diseased minds, and diseased morals, all of which were believed to pose a very real threat to the social order. Prostitutes are repeatedly identified as being not merely the carrier, but the source of many of the most dreadful and deadly diseases suffered by individuals in all classes of society. Medical professionals regarded Prostitution itself as a uniquely dangerous and infectious ‘Social Disease’, and discussed how Science could best contain and eradicate so virulent a form of ‘Social Contagion’.

These medical journal articles are remarkably matter-of-fact. There is seldom any sympathy expressed for the misery and danger of prostitutes' lives, because they were firmly believed to have "chosen" a life of prostitution as a direct result of their own moral, physiological, hereditary and spiritual faults. Prostitutes were viewed as being inherently different from ‘normal’ women, and it was genuinely believed that ‘Modern Science’ had proven this to be an undeniable fact. This incredibly judgmental point of view was so deeply ingrained that I have yet to find an article in a c.1880’s medical journal that even questions its veracity.

Medical professionals studied prostitutes just as they studied criminals, from a pseudo-scientific 'Criminal Anthropology' perspective, minutely analyzing their physical characteristics in order to prove a foregone conclusion- that prostitutes belonged to a sub-class of human beings born "Morally and Physically Degenerate".

I found these contemporary articles quite illuminating, in particular because of the extremely rigid contemporary paradigm they reveal. Physicians were among the most highly educated people in society. They had presumably become physicians because they wished to help their fellow human beings by alleviating suffering and restoring health. Therefore one might expect physicians to take a somewhat more enlightened and compassionate view of the human beings who ended up becoming prostitutes. But in these journal articles the health professionals often speak of prostitutes as if they are plague-infected vermin in need of extermination.

If this was the ingrained attitude of intelligent, well-educated professionals towards prostitutes, it gives one a very sobering idea of the attitudes that might have been held by the rest of society... including those of the individual known to history as Jack the Ripper.

Best regards,
Archaic

[Archaic]

Study of Prostitutes From 'Criminal Anthropology' Perspective

1890: 'Study of Russian Prostitutes Part I’

This article is from ‘Public Health, The Journal of the Society of Medical Officers of Health’, 1890.

It presents a detailed “scientific” study of Russian prostitutes from the Criminal Anthropology perspective popularized by Cesar Lombroso. Criminal Anthropology is also known as “Biological Determinism” and typically applies heavily biased pseudo-scientific social judgments that are then “scientifically proven” using flawed ‘scientific method’. It’s also called ‘Social Darwinism’ because prejudices are ‘scientifically’ and morally justified by invoking misunderstood aspects of Darwinian Theory.

Note that the study employs many seemingly objective scientific terms, yet still exhibits obvious bias by referring to the women as “whores”, automatically excluding them from a ‘control’ group labeled “honest women”, and by seeking to identify prostitutes as constituting a hopelessly degenerate and entirely separate “race” of human beings.

The final paragraph really blew me away.

Best regards,
Archaic

PS: Sorry the article segments are a bit "choppy"; the closely-set paragraph structure and narrow type made it awkward to divide. they also loaded a bit awkwardly. Please read article segments horizontally, Left to Right. Thanks.

[Archaic]

Study of Prostitutes From Criminal Anthropology Perspective, Part II.

This is the 'Study of Russian Prostitutes, Part II', 1890.

It's from the same journal as Part I, 'Public Health', 1890.

It struck me that the female doctor who conducted this study (and who was certainly a pioneer in her field) adopted the same discompassionate, supposedly "scientifically objective" perspective that the male doctors employed.

Best regards,
Archaic

(Again, the article segments read left to right.)

[lynn cates]

good job

Hello Bunny. Good work, as always.

Cheers.
LC

[Archaic]

Hi Lynn.Thank you.

How did you like the highly objective scientific language... phrases like "psychic anomalies" and "stigmata of degeneration"?

Hmmm......no bias here...

Best regards,
Archaic

[lynn cates]

bias

Hello Bunny. Bias? Well, it seems to be impossible to do any thinking without bias--everything gets represented to us through our personal filters.

But whatever the faults of these ladies, at least they didn't practise solitary vice, so I fear we must look elsewhere for Ripper suspects (heh-heh).

Cheers.
LC

[Jane Coram]

Thanks Archaic.

I loved the different categories, like 'Hysterical' and 'Hare-brained'. Talk about having your head up your ****! Fascinating reading though.

I did think it was interesting that he observed that that particular group of prostitutes were rarely given to suicide. Okay he's talking about Russian prostitutes, but Mary Kelly's comments to Lizzie Albrook (presuming they were actually said) do suggest that she was very fed up with life. Obviously I wasn't alive back in 1888 (although it bloodywell feels like it sometimes), but although I've heard a lot of prostitutes moaning about doing themselves in because they'd had enough, there was only one that actually tried it (and failed thankfully) and that was because her boyfriend had dumped her and nothing to do with her job at all. I've always got the impression that they were too busy trying to survive to think about doing away with themselves. That was 50+ years ago though, it might well be different now. There weren't the same problems then the poor girls have now. Drugs weren't the main addiction amongst prostitutes, it was still alcohol, and I suspect the suicide rate amongst them these days might be quite high.

From what we know of the victims, which granted isn't much, with the exception of Mary, they didn't really seem to have any thoughts of suicide, in fact Kate seems to have been fairly contented with her lot and always singing and jolly. Polly doesn't give the impression that she was depressed, unless she was putting on a brave face when she joked about her bonnet, Annie poor soul might well have known she wasn't long for this world anyway, and Liz seems far to feisty to allow herself to get suicidal. Mary, who was actually the one that had least to moan about was the one who seemed most depressed. It would be interesting to see if there are any statistics around for suicides amongst prostitutes in London in 1888.

Great article anyway, thanks Archaic.

Much love

Janie

xxxx

[jason_c]

Excellent finds Archaic.

Dispassionately is surely the correct way for scientists to study, even for a female scientist.

[Archaic]

Hi Jason, Janie and Lynn. Thanks for your responses.

Lynn, I agree, there is usually "bias" in life..whether you want to call it Paradigm or Weltanshauung. But as Jason pointed out, if one is claiming to be a Scientist adhering to Scientific Method and proving things Scientifically, objectivity is required or the results are useless and the study can be manipulated to "prove" any result that one wishes.

The study above began with many extremely biased assumptions, including that "all prostitutes are alike" and are "different form normal women", treated them as some monolithic block devoid of natural human individuality, and conducted the entire study in such a way that it had to prove their premises!

The study is utterly flawed and unscientific, and in my opinion tells us much more about the attitudes and prejudices of those who conducted it than it does about the poor women who were its subject.

(By the way, Lynn, I took an entire university course in Weltansauung through the U.W. School of International Studies when I was 18, and it was one of my all-time favorite courses. It was utterly fascinating and I learned a lot. Being the 'scholarly type' yourself you'd have loved that class. )

Hi Janie. Yes "Hare-Brained" is a very precise scientific term, isn't it? When a "study" starts out calling their subjects "whores" and describing them in animal terms, you can kind of guess where it's going. Comparing prostitutes to animals was also derived from their very poor understanding of Darwin's Theory of Evolution. They mistakenly believed that Darwinian Theory indicated that some people were "less evolved" than others (themselves, of course!) and were throwbacks to "lower forms of life", thus displaying the characteristics of animals rather than of human beings.
Too bad they never applied that study to those in high places; the results would have been interesting!! (Did Queen Victoria look "highly evolved''?)

I'm not sure about the frequency of suicide among prostitutes. Life was so unbelievably miserable for the poor, and for poor prostitutes in particular, that it amazes me that they could go on day after day. But there were very powerful cultural & religious controls in place against suicide in those days. It was considered a form of Murder (Self-Murder) and like other murderers, suicides were not permitted to be buried in consecrated ground. (Murderers who died while in prison or were executed were buried in unmarked, unconsecrated ground right in the prison yard rather than in a cemetery.) I guess drinking yourself to death and living dangerously isn't counted as suicide, though many prostitutes must have gone that route to escape their own misery.

I'll see if I can find any documented rates in the medical journals that look reliable and let you know.

(This is a bit off-topic, but I've always wondered how Monty Druitt's family got him buried in consecrated ground in a cemetery, and I think the answer must be that they had money and influence.)

Thanks and best regards,
Archaic

[jason_c]

Archaic

I dont mean to be intentionally quarrelsome but would the same scientific study detailing the "socio-economic realities of the Victorian Era" be just as biased?


One thing that did stand out for me was the rejection of nymphomania in the study.

[Archaic]

The Socio-Economic Realities of Prostitution

Hi Jason.

When I said that the study ignored the socio-economic realities, I meant that in their study they chose to ignore certain critical parameters which if included would have dramatically affected their conclusions. For example, it's stated over and over again that women "chose prostitution" from "a love of fine things", "a refusal to work", "a desire for an easy life, and "perverted moral and sexual instincts".

There's no acknowledgment of the fact that simply by being born female one had very limited employment opportunities. Women earned far less than men even if they did the same work. Women working in the "sweated trades" and factories worked like slaves under horrible conditions for 12-16 hours a day and were paid so incredibly little that they remained at the poverty level. (They were referred to as "the Working Poor".)

A woman was expected to marry and become the mother of a family. If she did anything else she was "abnormal" and had "removed herself from her proper sphere in life"- therefore whatever happened was all her fault. There was no allowance made for the fact that many marriages were unhappy or that wives could be legally beaten and abused by their husbands because they were regarded by law as his property.

If a woman left her husband for whatever reason, she had very few options to earn enough money to survive. If a young woman or girl was seduced by a man- or even if she was raped- she was considered "ruined" and became a social outcast. In order to get a steady job as even a scullery maid in someone's house (doing all the dirty work & scrubbing, the lowest job on the totem pole), a woman had to have "a character". This meant formal references showing that she was of "good character". Household servants lived in terror of "losing their characters". To even be accused of an impropriety (like having a boyfriend) was seen as evidence of guilt and the servant lost her place and was turned out. A "fallen woman" who had even once had sex outside of marriage was considered to have permanently lost her "character", and she would never be considered for even the most menial position in a respectable household.

Without steady employment and a place to live, many women drifted in to "casual prostitution" just to survive. Perhaps some naive young women imagined that the life of a prostitute was "easy" and would fulfill their "love of fine things", but how many ever reached the level of becoming a wealthy courtesan??
There weren't many Madame Pompadours in Whitechapel. I doubt that any Whitechapel prostitutes had "easy luxurious" lives. The vast majority simply had no other options.

Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, and Mary Kelly were all women who had been married. Their marriages had failed (or their husband died, as was Mary's case) and they were forced to survive on the street. Catherine Eddowes wasn't formally married, but she lived with Conway for a number of years in a common-law marriage. When these relationships ended, these women ended up on the street. What were their options?
We know that at least four of the five tried to earn money in other ways when possible- by street-hawking, cleaning, hop-picking, etc. These jobs paid very little and weren't steady; they were occasional, sporadic, or seasonal. Unemployment was rampant in Whitechapel; even able-bodied young men like George Hutchinson couldn't find steady work. Street-hawking and many other jobs like sewing required a little investment money up front to buy the necessary supplies. None of these women had that money. So when they needed something to eat and a night's shelter from the cold, street prostitution was the job that paid immediate cash (though a pitifully small amount).

The fundamental premises of the 1890 study are simply untrue. The prostitutes in the study were each individual human beings with their own life story, just like other people. Few women in the LVP "chose" prostitution, and fewer still ended up with "fine things" or "an easy life". In fact, it's hard to imagine a more difficult and miserable life.

Best regards,
Archaic

[Hunter]

You are spot on, Archaic.

Suicide is a luxury afforded to people who have time to dwell on more than just the recent past. Living from moment to moment, as these women did, would not precipitate such thoughts.

The basic instinct of survival is perhaps the strongest. The influence of addiction, in varying degrees, is strong as well... thus a revolving door pattern sets in that develops its own lifestyle...add this to the little choices a woman had to pursue beyond the bounds of marriage.

I see little difference in the crack addicted streetwalkers of today and the alcohol addicted ones of a few generations ago, except, alcohol was accepted socially, in some degree, throughout various levels of society... only to be condemed when excesses were involved that affected the character of the individual. The effects of powerful modern drugs are more immediate. The temperance movement of the late Victorian era, given to flourish during Edwardian times, dwelt more on the influences of alcohol on men - and its effects on the stability of the family structure - than on 'fallen women' of the day.

If the Whitechapel murders did anything remotely positive, in light of the horrors of the murders themselves, it was to challenge, for the first time, the misconceptions expounded in the articles posted by Archaic... and that was - beyond Lombroso's phsyological thesis on human behavior; a belief that was first embraced by Krafft-Ebing himself - the environmemtal factor was brought into the realm of conditions as a result. In later years, Krafft-Ebing, too, began to challenge the very concepts of his mentor.

Ironically, this ingrained bias played a two-fold part in the hunt for the perpetrator/s of these murders. One only has to look at Anderson's own 'solution' in removing the targeted victims from the clutches of the murderer...and Macnaghten's 'resolution' of what type of individual the murderer must have been.

It would be even more ironic if the murderer used these same notions about these women to start his rampage... the killer and the men who sought his capture operating from the same playbook, so to speak.

Just food for thought.

[Archaic]

1891 Medical Journal Review of Russian Prostitute Study

Thanks for the interesting post Hunter. I'm still mulling over what you said.

This article is from the 1891 Columbus Medical Journal, and is a good example of how the Tarnowski study was received by medical professionals.

Take the last line: "The prostitute is a special and morbid type of humanity"...

Hmmm... There's nothing quite like having all one's personal prejudices and social mores confirmed by Science, is there?

The attitude of this reviewer made me wonder what sort of impact this type of condemnatory 'scientific study' had on donations to charity, legislative efforts to help the poor, etc? It seems that if one were to accept the notion that huge swaths of humanity are ''born criminals'', ''hopelessly degenerate'', and ''incapable of bettering themselves'', it would tend to let one off the moral hook when it came to giving money to charity.

Best regards,
Archaic

PS: Phthisis is the Greek term for Tuberculosis. In Victorian times it was applied to various "wasting" conditions and consumptive diseases, especially Pulmonary Tuberculosis.

[jason_c]

Archaic, I dont really disagree with any of your above post. All I would add is that many women in the same circumstances chose not to turn to prostitution.

"when they needed something to eat and a night's shelter from the cold, street prostitution was the job that paid immediate cash (though a pitifully small amount)."

I did notice you left out alcohol as a reason needed for immediate cash.

[Archaic]

re: Alcohol Use Among Prostitutes

Hi Jason. Thanks for your response.

Yes, it’s true that many women chose not to turn to prostitution. I didn't mean to imply that I was giving any sort of 'complete history' of socio-economic realities for women in the LVP in my previous post. I was just pointing out that the 1890 'scientific study' excluded some very key parameters in attempting to account for the phenomena of Prostitution, and that these exclusions hopelessly skewed their conclusions so they ended up merely reinforcing existing prejudices.

And I'm under no illusions as to the amount of alcohol many prostitutes consumed. It’s beyond our powers to know when each individual woman began drinking and why. Maybe some of them began drinking under the stress of a failing marriage/relationship, and it’s likely many others accelerated the breakup of their domestic situations by indulging their inclination for alcohol. And as you say, a woman who wanted alcohol needed ready cash- or a “friend”. It may be that a taste for alcohol is how many women got started in street prostitution. Perhaps a man in a pub bought them a few rounds, got them rather inebriated, and they took a little walk together.

I think all of can agree that it’s easy to understand why an unemployed homeless woman who was just barely surviving by offering two-penny sexual encounters in the public street might be prone to drown her sorrows in alcohol whenever she got the chance. Alcohol addiction often starts out as a coping mechanism to help one temporarily ‘escape’ a difficult personal situation. Unfortunately, it’s an extremely maladaptive coping mechanism. Even if an East End prostitute didn’t start out as an alcoholic, due to her lifestyle she was in great danger of becoming one. Some of the personal histories we have describe what sounds like classic “binge drinking”- the binge drinker doesn’t drink every day, but when alcohol is available tends to drink to excess.

I feel pity and compassion for these women. I honestly don't know how they survived such misery and degradation. I can't blame them for drinking alcohol when they got the chance. If any of us were in their shoes for even 24 hours I think we'd be tempted to drink rat poison.

Thanks for your participation, Jason, and for bringing up some very valid points.

Best regards, Archaic