chapter 7 The Paradoxes and Contradictions of Prostitution in Paris Susan P. Conner Overview and Sources Paris, France changed dramatically between the seventeenth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. As the population of Paris increased from nearly 250,000 residents in 1600 to a current population of approximately 2.2 million in the city centre,1 the city was redefined by its revolutions, sub- sequent industrialization and immigration, and wars. During those centuries, prostitution was redefined as well. Originally prostitution was a moral offense and an issue of public order. Individual prostitutes, who were defined collec- tively under the law, were typically poor, young women from the provinces.2 They were dealt with in three ways: the judicial system if they committed other more serious infractions, prison hospitals if they were diseased, or the police in an effort to enforce order. * I would like to thank Central Michigan University for several Research and Creative En- deavors Grants in support of this project, the neh for a Travel to Collections Grant, and col- leagues who have given critiques on aspects of this research including Dena Goodman, Isser Wolloch, Alan Williams, Linda Merians, Tim Shaffer, and Rosamond Hooper-Hamersley. Por- tions of this research have been published as “The Pox in Eighteenth-Century France”, in Linda Merians (ed.), The Secret Malady: Venereal Disease in Eighteenth-Century England and France (Lexington, ky, 1996), pp. 15–33; “Public Women and Public Virtue: Prostitution in Revolutionary Paris”, Eighteenth Century Studies, 28 (1994–1995), pp. 221–240; “Politics, Pros- titution and the Pox in Revolutionary Paris, 1789–1799”, Journal of Social History, 22 (1989), pp. 713–734; and “Prostitution and the Jacobin Agenda for Social Control”, Eighteenth-Century Life, 12 (1988), pp. 42–51. 1 Initially the walled city of Paris was defined by its customs barriers. Today the city centre is defined by its twenty arrondissements which include 2.2 million residents, and the metro- politan area includes nearly 12 million inhabitants and casual residents. Without the customs wall of the eighteenth century, there is little distinction between the city and the outskirts. 2 Court records confirm this demographic, although period writers often described prostitutes as lazy, slothful do-nothings who were courting luxury. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi �0.��63/9789004346�53_008 Susan P. Conner - 9789004346253 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 04:55:10AM via free access <UN> 172 Conner In the seventeenth century, the system of dealing with prostitution in Paris changed from sporadic toleration briefly to confinement. In the eighteenth century, toleration and social control characterized governmental practices. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, houses of prostitution or brothels (lupanars, maisons closes, maisons de tolérance, and bordels) were licensed, and the “French System” was inaugurated. As a regulationist system, it also al- lowed for toleration because prostitution remained untouched by governmen- tal legislation. Functionally, the “French System” protected those prostitutes whom it enclosed while expanding police surveillance. Toleration continued to be a hallmark of the first half of the twentieth century, in spite of aboli- tionist assaults on the system. Even when the regulated houses of prostitution were closed after World War ii, prostitution per se was unaffected. This posi- tion was consistent with how the French have historically defined prostitution in classical terms, i.e., prostitution as a “sewer in the palace” or an unavoidable necessity. In 1960, the French adopted the un “Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others” (1949), which officially placed France among abolitionist countries.3 Yet, the French also clarified their position; they would continue to respect the liberty of an in- dividual to be a prostitute. There was little debate until the 1990s, so the police continued their surveillance and monitoring of prostitutes. Toleration, for all intents and purposes, continued. Only very recently has a new, systematic re- evaluation of prostitution taken place. Fundamentally this is because Paris has changed dramatically. There are far more defined types of sex work than even a half century ago, and morality is not an unimportant element in the debates. In Paris today, prostitution is not viewed as a singular type of female solicit- ing. There are multiple prostitutions, each with its own character, and they are viewed differently by those in authority. In fact, the most recent French na- tional legislation (the Sarkozy Law) placed sex workers, the majority of whom are immigrants, under the legal umbrella of a “danger to domestic security”.4 As of 2013, with a change in the government, the debate on prostitution was 3 “Circulaire du 25 novembre 1960 à la répression du proxénétisme”, available at: http://www .legifrance.gouv.fr/jopdf/common/jo_pdf.jsp?numJO=0&dateJO=19601127&numTexte=1060 9&pageDebut=10609&pageFin; last accessed 7 July 2017. 4 “Loi n° 2003–239 du 18 Mars 2003 dite la Loi Sarkozy ii pour la sécurité intérieure”, available at: http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do;jsessionid=83ED992BAE071FD7FA1CF83853 CFF981.tpdjo10v_3?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000005634107&dateTexte=20120426; last accessed 7 July 2017. See also Marie Elisabeth Handman and Janine Mossuz-Lavau (eds), La prostitution à Paris (Paris, 2005). Susan P. Conner - 9789004346253 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 04:55:10AM via free access <UN> The Paradoxes and Contradictions of Prostitution in Paris 173 renewed, and on 4 December, the National Assembly (the lower house of the French Parliament) overwhelmingly passed a law to criminalize clients while reversing the Sarkozy Law and decriminalizing the outward manifestations of prostitution. When the French Senate received the bill for review and action, it was far less enthusiastic and referred the legislation to a Select Committee which rejected the stringent fines on customers, saying that prostitution would be driven underground, tying it more directly to human trafficking and endan- gering prostitutes further.5 Since then, the government has taken new action, rejecting the criminalization of clients and reinstating the crime of passive solicitation against prostitutes. One opponent of the 2015 Senate measure re- marked, “Prostitutes are always the offenders; the client is always king.”6 In this urban overview of prostitution in Paris, I have employed a number of studies defining prostitution, outlining its context, and delineating prostitutes’ social profiles. I have also attempted to provide evidence about governmental and church responses to the work done by prostitutes in Paris, along with the challenging issues of migration, industrialization, late marriage, the impacts of war, and ultimately the market for sex. There are clear changes in policy during this four-century period, particularly the explicit gender and class differentia- tions that were firmly established in the nineteenth century.7 I will also address the agency of prostitutes themselves as they have, over time, exhibited differ- ent responses to their employment and their condition. In France, commercial sexuality has most often been viewed in terms of its relationship with the authorities. Therefore, it is important to note that the le- gal, juridical, and administrative approaches to prostitution often obscure the ways prostitutes operated. Prostitutes had their own networks, whether they were members of a family in pre-industrial France, supporting the family, or separated from it. Later, in post-revolutionary France, industrialization alone did not set the context for prostitution; nor were prostitutes always voiceless as moral crusaders have typically characterized them. Their relationship to the French state and to bourgeois society was much more complex. Finally, it is 5 France 24 coverage of the National Assembly, available at: http://www.france24.com/en/ 20131204-french-assembly-parliament-votes-fine-pay-sex-clients-prostitution/; last accessed 11 March 2016. See also Gert Vermeulen and Nina Peršak, Prostitution: From Discourse to De- scription, from Moralization to Normalization (Antwerp, 2014), p. 200. For additional cover- age, see “Congratulations to Sex Workers in France”, available at: http://prostitutescollective .net/2014/07/23/congratulations-sex-workers-france/; last accessed 7 July 2017. 6 “Le Sénat pénalise les prostituées mais pas leur clients”, Le Monde.fr Société, 30 March 2015, available at: http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2015/03/30/prostitution-le-senat-retablit -le-delit-de-racolage_4606124_3224.html; last accessed 7 July 2017. 7 See especially Jill Harsin, Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Princeton, 1985). Susan P. Conner - 9789004346253 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 04:55:10AM via free access <UN> 174 Conner true that police, court, and prison dossiers reflect the words of the bureau- crats who recorded them; but they also contain the words of their subjects, and those truths and fictions can be ferreted out.8 I have based this study of prostitution in Paris on the following types of sources: royal decrees, administrative and police circulars, and national laws; case studies (also collected as aggregate data) based on the records of tribu- nals such as the Châtelet and transcripts of the Correctional Police; prison ledgers such as