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.
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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).
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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).
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8 See the approach taken by Natalie Davis in Fictions in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth Century France (Stanford, 1987). 9 The laws, decrees, and circulars through 1870 are itemized in a number of sources including La prostitution à Paris et à Londres by C.J. Lecour (Paris, 1870) who was commissioner and bureau chief at the Préfecture de Police. His work also includes descriptions of prostitutes, statistics on those who were registered and those who were not, and additional statistics on venereal diseases. Similarly, Handman and Mossuz-Lavau’s work (see note 4) defines each type of prostitution in Paris in 2002–2004, with demographics and legal restrictions when applicable. Other works dealing with the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods use archival collections at the Archives de la Préfecture de Police [app], the Archives de l’Assistance publique [aap], and the Archives nationales [an], as well as published works at the app and the Bibliothèque nationale [bn]. Nineteenth-century studies rely heavily on the collections of the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand. Contemporary works concerning the lat- ter nineteenth century include Emile Richard, La prostitution à Paris (Paris, 1890), Josephine Butler, Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade (New York, 1896), Dr Oscar Commenge, La prostitution clandestine à Paris (Paris, 1897), and Louis Fiaux, La police des moeurs devant la commission extraparlementaire du régime des moeurs (Paris, 1907–12). Important secondary sources include Philip Riley, A Lust for Virtue: Louis xiv’s Attack on Sin in Seventeenth-Century France (Westport, 2001); Erica Marie Benabou, La prostitution et la police des moeurs au xviiie siècle (Paris, 1987); Harsin, Policing Prostitution on the nineteenth century (see note 7) and Alain Corbin, Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850 (Cambridge, ma 1990) on the latter nineteenth century; and Mary Louise Roberts, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American gi in World War ii France (Chicago, 2013) and Lilian Mathieu, “The Emergence and Uncertain Outcomes of Prostitutes’ Social Movements”, The European Journal of Women’s Studies, 10 (2003), pp. 29–50, on aspects of the twentieth century.
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Defining Prostitution in Paris
The next paragraphs provide definitions of the terms associated with the prac- tice of prostitution in Paris and its regulation, focusing in particular on four words: prostitution, soliciting, pimping, and procuring. “Prostitution” has typi- cally meant the provision of sexual services, later defined as the exchange of sexual services for payment. While it has generally been seen as a female pro- fession, prostitution has not historically been gendered; and in Paris in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, prostitution has taken many forms among female, male, and transgendered practitioners. “Soliciting”, the second term identified with prostitution, is the act of at- tracting clients. While simple on face value, soliciting is strikingly complex because of its variations. Overt solicitation or le racolage actif has always been under legal sanction, whether in the army encampments of Louis xiv, under the arcades of the Palais Royal, or along the rue Saint-Denis. Penalties for overt solicitation were most often meted out by the police, and they varied dramati- cally. Passive solicitation or le racolage passif is something quite different be- cause it assumes that the prostitute makes no strikingly outward overtures to the potential client. Yet, a slight glance, an uncategorized attitude, an inad- vertent approach, or perceived provocative poses can all be deemed passive solicitation by authorities. Codified most recently under the Sarkozy Law, such actions were subject to police intervention.10 Historically, passive solicitation was considered a corollary of prostitution so long as it was not scandalous; but as of 2003, it was classed as criminal. Such remains the case today. “Pimping”, the third term associated with prostitution, is carried out by a pimp who serves as an agent for a prostitute, receiving a portion of the pros- titute’s earnings. In return, the pimp provides physical protection, advertis- ing, and/or a location for practise of the trade. Contrary to contemporary
10 See above, note 4.
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11 Debates since the nineteenth century often have centred on whether any form of prosti- tution is a choice. According to some arguments, it cannot be a choice because it is either a form of sexual slavery to a procurer or pimp or a response to poverty and need.
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A Social and Labour History of Prostitution in Paris
Antecedents: Mediaeval Prostitution as a Function of Urban Life Throughout most of the history of Paris, efforts to suppress prostitution have been “few, short-lived and ineffective.”12 While this study of prostitution in Paris officially begins in the seventeenth century, it is important to trace ante- cedents to earlier times. Prostitution was a fact of urban life; prostitutes were indeed sex labourers, and licensed brothels and bathhouses (public stews) were ubiquitous during the Middle Ages. Common language differentiated the types of prostitutes, e.g., public prostitutes in the brothels, street walkers, “easy women” who might also be vagabonds, and women who practised clandestine- ly.13 In Latin texts, prostitutes were called meretrices; in impolite French, putain or whore.14 Ultimately, prostitution was restricted to an area that today corre- sponds to portions of the 1st through 4th arrondissements on the Right Bank. The area was a labyrinth of narrow streets with colourful and earthy names that described the commerce that took place there: la rue du Poil-au-con, la rue Tire-Vit, la rue Gratte-Cul, la rue Pute-y-Musse, and la rue Trousse-nonnain.15 As the fourteenth century dawned, Paris boasted 200,000 inhabitants, making it the largest city in western Europe, and a reasonably loose code of morality governed the court, the well-off, and even the poor. While not wide- spread, there had been earlier church teachings that rendered judgement on whether or not prostitutes’ earnings could be contributed to church coffers.
12 Jacques Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution (New York, 1988), p. 9. The most notable attempts to eradicate prostitution were made by Louis ix in 1254 to expel all “women of evil life” from the kingdom of France and to confiscate their belongings. Two years later, Louis ix demanded that they be expelled from the centre of the city, particularly from anywhere near “holy places, such as churches and cemeteries.” Louis ix revised his position in 1269, establishing extramural areas for the practice of prostitution. His son took a repressive position regarding procurers (who were mostly female). Under the law they could be burned alive, subjected to the pillory, scourged, or mutilated. See also Leah Otis, Pros- titution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc (Chicago, 1985), p. 20, and William Sanger, The History of Prostitution: Its Extent, Causes, and Effects throughout the World (New York, 1858), pp. 95–97. 13 Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, pp. 7–8. 14 Bronislaw Geremek, The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris (Cambridge, ma, 1987), p. 215. 15 See Jacques Hillairet, Dictionnaire historique des rues de Paris, 2 vols (Paris, 1961). One must search alphabetically by modern street names. See also Benabou, La prostitution, p. 21. I have not attempted to translate the names of these streets since words change over time. For readers who do not know French, note that the names generally reflect private parts of the body, the acts themselves, or anti-clerical fixations.
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The question revolved around whether a prostitute was actually engaged in work. According to Thomas of Chobham, a canon of the cathedral of Notre Dame, women who took pleasure in the act of venal sex “accomplished no work”, and the church could not receive their offerings. On the other hand, he noted that the majority of prostitutes were women who had no choice: “they rent their body and furnish work.” In essence, he classed most prostitutes as working poor and therefore their offerings to the church could be accepted.16 The poor married late and female mortality was higher than male mortal- ity, creating a gender imbalance. In this context, not only was prostitution accepted, it became a function of public order, institutionalized at the local municipal level.17 While prostitutes were among those regarded as marginal, their relationship to the police and to their clients placed them squarely in the labour market. In fact, police directives established their working hours, regulated their observance of holidays, and treated them more generously than people in many other occupations. In spite of our modern perceptions of prostitution as a nocturnal job, Parisian curfews affected all labourers, includ- ing prostitutes who were required to leave their brothels at dusk. Nonetheless, their working hours were allowed to be among the longest relative to other labourers in the city.18 Over the next two centuries, because of the prevalence of venereal diseases prostitutes sporadically would be driven from the streets; but, regardless of the ordinances and decrees, very little actually changed until the latter half of the seventeenth century.19 For the most part, the city of Paris practised toleration, which included the regulation of prostitution by the police.
The Seventeenth Century: Morality, Repression, and Confinement
By the time of Louis xiv in the last half of the seventeenth century, the popu- lation of Paris had grown to 500,000. Although Louis xiv had established his residence at Versailles, he kept an eye on Paris, and he intended to bring a re- generation of morality to the French kingdom’s largest city. As one historian
16 Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, pp. 82–83. 17 Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society, pp. 100–102. 18 See Geremek, Margins of Society, p. 217; Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, p. 64. 19 A compilation of these laws and ordinances from 1496 to 1644 may be found at the Ar- chives de la Préfecture de Police (Paris), Les moeurs, 2 vols (handwritten manuscript).
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20 Philip Riley, A Lust for Virtue: Louis xiv’s Attack on Sin in Seventeenth-Century France (Westport, 2001), p. 15. 21 Ibid., p. xiii. 22 Ibid., p. 111. 23 François André Isambert, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises depuis l’an 420 jusqu’à la Révolution de 1789, 29 vols (Paris, 1821–1833), xix, pp. 441–445.
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The Eighteenth Century: Redefining Prostitution, Police Control, and Hygiene
At the end of Louis xiv’s reign came the most significant ordinance that gov- erned the remainder of the pre-Revolutionary eighteenth century. It was the Ordonnance royale of 26 July 1713. With this declaration, the authority of the police over prostitution in Paris was assured, shifting jurisdiction from courts such as the Châtelet directly to the police. Interpretations of this ordinance vary dramatically, but instead of providing common prostitutes with more due process, those who were rounded up in the raids were judged en masse. On average, 600 to 800 cases were handled by the lieutenant general per year. Only one or two cases were heard by the Châtelet (criminal court), and no appeals reached the Parlement (highest court of France). What did all of this mean? Ultimately there were two definitions spelled out in the royal ordinance. The first was public debauchery and scandalous behaviour, and the second was procuring. The first definition was expressly vague and therefore less punitive. Were these women prostitutes? According to the law, not necessarily, so they were judged by the lieutenant general, sentenced with a fine or forced to make a payment to charity, stripped of their belongings which were distributed to the poor, and required to leave the city or face more stringent penalties. If they chose to appeal, they would remain in custody until the appeal was completed. This first type of behaviour was classed as a misdemeanour, with no prison time necessarily assigned. According to studies of the period, few women chose to appeal, and their choice not to appeal was a very conscious one. They could begin again, reconstruct themselves, ply their trade elsewhere, and retain their economic independence. Ultimately, their survival depended on their ability to control their earnings.24 Under the royal ordinance, the streets could be cleaned up rather quickly, and nightly rounds became more and more routine.
24 It is important to note the importance of families in the early modern period. As such, young women were part of the family economy, either leaving it to support themselves, so as not to be a drain on the family, or contributing to the entire upkeep of the family.
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In the second case of procuring or organized prostitution, for which corpo- ral punishment would likely be invoked, cases were remanded to the crimi- nal courts. Because due process had to be carefully applied, evidence suggests that few cases went this route.25 In other words, the system simply avoided the more difficult cases. While jurists argued the nuances of the law, the police took the most direct route to assuring public order, and prostitutes looked out for themselves. During the time of the Regency after Louis xiv’s death, the language of sin no longer dominated the discourse on prostitution. By mid-century, prostitution came more and more to be defined as a condition, not yet pathological, or as a state of being. Importantly, prostitutes served a purpose because they often led police to other criminal elements in society. Mistresses, who were under the surveillance of a Department of Kept Women beginning in 1747, were also im- portant to the police. They were ultimately part of the intelligence apparatus of the Paris police inspectors.26 Like many common prostitutes, the dames en- tretenues (kept women or mistresses) frequently came from the subordinate classes or the lower-middling groups in society, but their pathways led to greater economic security. They could move in the same circles as actresses or those in the theatre and opera, take on the style and pretensions of those above them, and negotiate relationships that sometimes provided permanent patron-mistress arrangements, marriage, or other access to steady income. The police watched them closely because it was believed that they could enfeeble and impoverish those who fell prey to them. Ultimately those who came to Paris, mostly from the north and east of France, followed several paths to elite prostitution. They were sold into elite prostitution to support their families, fled their families because of a sexual encounter, sought other ways to assist their families by seeking employment in Paris and ended up first as prostitutes and then as kept women, or consciously chose a better life among the Parisian
25 Benabou, La prostitution, pp. 24–25. 26 Nina Kushner, Erotic Exchanges: The World of Elite Prostitution in Eighteenth Century Paris (Ithaca, 2013), p. 30 ff; and Nina Kushner, “The Case of the Closely Watched Courtesans”, Slate (15 April 2014), pp. 1–3, available at: https://longform.org/posts/the-case-of-the- closely-watched-courtesans; last accessed 29 June 2017. The Department of Kept Women was one part of a massive police apparatus that dealt with everything from markets to cemeteries and hygiene (as it was in the eighteenth century) and to the portion of the population that was not under the supervision of a family or husband. The incredibly rich dossiers that are part of the collection of the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal detail how the demimonde was used to maintain order as police inspectors demanded current informa- tion from them, as the police also protected unsuspecting upper class males from mésal- liances should they become too closely allied with one of the dames entretenues, and as the police created a growing network of surveillance in the eighteenth century.
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demimonde.27 What separates them from other prostitutes was their ability to accumulate more than subsistence earnings, either through their patrons or other networks. They worked a system that seemed to always have a place for them. When it came to police targets, the eighteenth-century obsession was with non-resident paupers, the homeless, and beggars.28 During this period of scar- city, more young women moved to Paris, looking for a marriage and a better life. Yet, the city had little to offer them. They were targets for unscrupulous employers and at the mercy of those who rented them furnished rooms. Not surprisingly they became easy prey for pimps and madams, particularly if they had no network or means of sufficient support. Many public women avoided police notice, but those who were disruptive or who had caused a scandal in the eyes of the police or their neighbours were rounded up for police audi- ences and transported in an open cart, often with their heads shaved and in chains, to prison-hospitals.29 Additional ordinances in this century condemned sodomites and women found in military encampments. Interestingly, the ordinance only covered women who were not native to the area and who were without employment. By 1768, the ordinance was re-issued to cover all women who were suspected of prostitution. Penalties were increased to incarceration and treatment for venereal diseases. Laws were mute on prostitution per se, but its public mani- festations were to be masked. Other pre-revolutionary ordinances in 1778 and 1780 established fines for renting properties to prostitutes, for allowing unmar- ried men and women to cohabit, for welcoming them into cabarets and places of entertainment, as well as for not filing the appropriate paperwork for per- sons living in boarding houses and furnished rooms. New curfews were also established.30
The Demographics of Eighteenth-Century Prostitutes
Who were the Paris prostitutes of the eighteenth century? Based on the records of Saint-Martin for 1765, 1766, and 1770, over 97 per cent of the 2,069 women who were arrested were employed in some manner, although their occupations
27 Archives de la Bastille in Kushner, Erotic Exchanges, p. 72 ff. 28 Robert M. Schwartz, Policing the Poor in Eighteenth-Century France (Chapel Hill, 1988), pp. 27–28. 29 Benabou, La prostitution, p. 62. 30 Isambert, Recueil général, xxv, pp. 448–450.
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Table 7.1 Occupations of women arrested for prostitution, Prison Saint Martin, 1755, 1765, 1770.
Occupation Number Percentage of total
Clothing trades and textiles including 1021 49.3% fabrication, repair, sales Washing 300 14.5% Small business or shop assistants 272 13.1% Servants 263 12.7% Artisans (not including textiles) 94 4.5% Day laborers 39 1.9% Agricultural laborers 15 0.7% Transport, message carriers, errand runners 11 0.5% Entertainment 4 0.2% Diverse 2 0.1% Unemployed or not known 48 2.3% Total 2069 99.8%
Source: Benabou, La prostitution, pp. 280–285.
31 Benabou, La prostitution, pp. 280–285. Saint Martin was a transit location for women po- tentially destined for incarceration in the Salpêtrière after their police audience. 32 Ibid., p. 319.
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Regardless of the data, contemporary accounts of prostitution argued that permanent prostitution had become a scourge. In 1762, one writer estimated that there were 25,000 prostitutes in Paris, although another later writer specu- lated that there were 30,000 on the streets and another 10,000 who were kept women or who were brothel residents.33 In that context, Nicholas Restif de La Bretonne published Le Pornographe, which was a treatise on prostitution, a call for public health measures, and a recommendation for the regulation of prosti- tution in what he called the Parthénions. These proposed “houses of pleasure” required clients to bathe, have appointments lasting no longer than half an hour with the resident prostitutes, and avoid drunkenness. Women would be subject to a regimen of reading, work of their choice, walking in the on-site park, or studying music or dancing. The Parthénions were also destined to have another function as “houses of populationism” because children borne from the liaisons would be raised there. In this way, the French population would grow, venereal disease would be managed, and prostitution would be con- tained. In particular, Restif argued that the basest, foulest forms of prostitution would be eradicated. The “meat markets” of brazen, half nude, lewd women would be gone from the streets of Paris. All prostitutes would be required to enter the Parthénions under penalty of prison, and outside of extraordinary circumstances like marriage, they would remain there for their entire lives.34 Some of what Restif wrote sounded like a return to the mediaeval municipal brothels. But, the Parthénions were also idyllic, even romantic, in their plan, and they also were designed to remove the stigma of venal sex and illegitimate children. In the writings of Restif and his contemporaries (and there were many) it was argued that prostitution should be firmly institutionalized.35 A few cahiers de doléances (grievances to the king) on the eve of the Revolution condemned immorality with a broad brush; but, next to them, there was a wildly popular
33 See a recent version of the work by Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet, La prostitution à Paris au xixe siècle: Texte présenté et annoté par Alain Corbin (Paris, 1981), pp. 87–94. It was originally published in 1836. Women who lodged in brothels often paid for rent, food, and clothing. If they were unable to work because of pregnancy or an illness, they could ac- cumulate large debts to the madam. 34 See Nicholas Restif de La Bretonne, Le pornographe ou idées d’un honnȇte homme sur un projet du réglement pour les prostituées (Paris, 1769), p. 111 ff. Maisons d’abbatage were also called “slaughterhouses” in vernacular French. 35 Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Panorama of Paris: Selections from Le Tableau de Paris (Univer- sity Park, 1999), p. 148. Mercier, among others, counselled fellow Parisians to consider so- lutions like the Parthénions: “Administrators, mark, read, and digest The Pornographer of Restif de la Bretonne.”
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Cleaning up the Streets: Prostitution and Social Control during the French Revolution
Among the first acts of the Revolution was a sweeping away the ordinances and decrees of the Old Order, creating the need for new principles of law and a new judicial structure. Yet again, regulations on prostitution per se were not introduced. A law of 16–24 August 1790 specified that good order in public places had to be maintained, and a decree of 10 July 1791 remanded women found in army barracks to the civilian police rather than to the military. The omnibus Code of 19–22 July 1791 brought no further direction to policing pros- titution. While it dealt with problems like noise, public gatherings, counterfeit keys, rickety street-side display racks, transvestites, pots of urine thrown from windows, and pots of flowers perched perilously close to window ledges, defi- nitions of anything relating to prostitution were entirely absent.38 In this fluid population of 630,000 Parisians, the police went to work. The mandate was not just to purge the streets of undesirables and effluvia, but to
36 Hector Fleischman, Les demoiselles d’amour du Palais-Royal: Avec la réimpression integral de dix pamphlets libres sur les filles publiques du Palais-Egalité et le bibliographie des libelles galants qui leur sont consacrés (Paris, 1911). 37 Benabou, La prostitution, p. 501. Benabou was citing the Encyclopédie méthodique ou par ordre des matières, par une Société de Gens de lettres, de savants et d’artistes (Paris, 1782–1791) rather than the better known Encyclopédie by Diderot and D’Alembert which was published earlier. 38 “Décret”, 19–22 July 1791, in Jean-Baptiste Duvergier, Collection complete des lois, décrets, ordonnances, réglements, et avis du Conseil d’Etat de 1788 à 1824, 78 vols (Paris, 1824–1878) iii, pp. 114–126.
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The Demographics of Prostitutes during the French Revolution Who were these women? According to one study of this period,40 of the 251 prostitutes who were arrested for solicitation in the section of Paris called Butte des Moulins, 62 per cent were born in the provinces and had recently arrived in the city. Nearly 92 per cent were single. They were also younger than their counterparts earlier in the century. For the first time, a significant num- ber of prostitutes stated that they had no occupation other than prostitution. Table 7.2 provides a more detailed view of the jobs of the 227 who reported an occupation. Gone from the occupations were laundresses and errand runners. In many cases, their clients had emigrated from France prior to or during the Terror. In the case of washerwomen, the price of soap had become prohibitive, and the supply of clients was uncertain. Given the strict penalties for begging, being a prostitute had its positive aspects. If arrested, the prison sentence was shorter. If a prostitute lived in a house that was not known by the police, she could effectively be invisible and immune from prosecution. Policies such as these could not have gone unnoticed. While unstated, the national policy was noth- ing less than a form of social control. Prostitutes would frequently be swept from the streets and bawdy houses, they would be punished but not too severe- ly, those who were diseased would be treated, and a firm moral order would be claimed by those in authority.
39 Susan P. Conner, “Prostitution and the Jacobin agenda for Social Control”, Eighteenth Cen- tury Life, 12 (1988), pp. 42–51, 48. 40 Ibid.
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Table 7.2 Occupations of women arrested for prostitution in Butte des Moulins, 1792–1793.
Occupation Number Percentage of total
Clothing trades and textiles including 91 40.0% fabrication, repair, sales Small business or shop assistants 28 11.0% Servants 13 6.0% Artisans (not including textiles) 4 2.0% Day laborers 24 10.5% Diverse 16 7.0% Prostitute or mistress 51 22.5% Total 227 99.0%
Source: Susan P. Conner, “Prostitution and the Jacobin agenda for Social Control”, Eighteenth Century Life, 12 (1988), pp. 42–51.
The Birth of the “French System”
Already in 1791, the police had begun what was tantamount to registration. This practice was regularized under the Central Bureau of the Paris police by 1799. Prostitutes were also subject to medical examinations as early as 1792 and automatically sent for prison treatment if they were infected with the “venere- al poison”. This practice was institutionalized under Napoleon in 1802, and, in 1805, the Dispensary of Saint Lazare was established. By 1810, fortnightly medi- cal inspections were mandated.41 According to contemporary accounts, mai- sons de tolérance (licensed brothels) began springing up in Paris, and 180 were recognized by the end of the First Empire in 1815. By 1823, all brothels were licensed. On two points, all French governments—Revolutionary, Napoleonic, and Restoration—agreed: there was a proper role for women as moral, upright mothers who taught their children the virtues of the Fatherland, but there was also a place for prostitution as a continuing means of social control. Men, who tended to marry later in life, needed an outlet for their “excess” sexuality; the family needed to be preserved; and women who fell into prostitution, whether through poverty, rape, or fornication, should be monitored because they would
41 Elizabeth A. Weston, “Prostitution in Paris in the Later Nineteenth Century: A Study of Political and Social Ideology” (Unpublished Ph.D., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1979), p. 25.
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42 Ibid., p. 7. See also Susan P. Conner, “Public Virtue and Public Women”, Eighteenth Century Studies, 28 (1994–1995), pp. 193–219. 43 Yves Guyot, La prostitution, (Paris, 1882), pp. 555–559. 44 Alain Corbin, “Commercial Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Paris: A System of Images and Regulations”, Representations, 14 (1986), pp. 209–219, 212. 45 Statistique de la France, 2nd series, Territoire et population (Paris, 1855) 2, p. 440. 46 Under the Code Napoléon, males could marry at age 25 and females at 21 with the con- sent of their parents, or their father alone if there was disagreement. Until 1965, married women did not have the right to work without their husband’s permission.
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Table 7.3 Married and unmarried males and females, Paris 1851.
Age range Unmarried Married Unmarried Married males males females females
15–20 45,672 204 39,338 4,735 20–25 57,747 7,730 33,258 23,046 25–30 41,189 25,671 24,340 37,697 30–35 18,357 33,642 11,730 33,847 Total 15–35 298,703 213,246 244,823 215,845
Source: Statistique de la France, 2nd series, Territoire et population (Paris, 1855) 2, p. 440.
Among the most influential writers on prostitution in nineteenth-century Paris was Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet, whose De la prostitution dans la ville de Paris, considérée sous le rapport de l’hygiène publique, de la morale et de l’administration was published in 1836. In his meticulous study of registered prostitutes, he searched for anything that would define them sociologically, biologically, or geographically.47 Of the 12,707 prostitutes who registered be- tween April 1816 and April 1831, he traced father’s employment, domiciles, ages, networks, and physical features, including whether or not their genitalia were like non-prostitutes. He concluded that for the most part the prostitutes were “constrained by economic need to practice [their] trade.” If they were Parisian born, they generally were daughters of artisan fathers who were not well edu- cated and who became domestics or were employed in the trades. One out of two was marginally literate, and only one fourth of the women were ille- gitimate. Of more than 5,000 prostitutes who provided a reason for taking up prostitution, half reported that they had chosen to do so because they were destitute or had lost their parents or home. Of the remainder, they had been abandoned by lovers, soldiers, or students, or they were responsible for family members, from siblings to elderly parents. Finally, there were those who had come to Paris to escape their previous provincial existence and to find a better life in the city. Among the prostitutes whom Parent-Duchâtelet interviewed, he found that they often took on pseudonyms, used argot peculiar to their trade, and drank hard liquor but they formed communities in which they cared for
47 A more recent edition is Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet, La prostitution à Paris au xixe siè- cle: Texte présenté et annoté par Alain Corbin (Paris, 1981), p. 70 ff. In the text of this article, I have preferred to use the original title.
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The Second Empire and the Formalization of the “French System”
Growth during the Second Empire doubled the size of Paris yet again.50 This increase in the population was partially a continuing result of migration from the provinces, typically from the north of France. The pattern of employment had also changed as industrialization grew. Although entire non-Parisian fami- lies had been employed in small enterprises in the first half of the nineteenth century, by the latter half men were the most likely to be employees in larger factories that required some level of skill. Nonetheless, Paris had more adult bachelors than any other city in the French state because salaries were still too low for them to support dependents. As a corollary, single women who moved to Paris were the least likely to find employment, and salaries were predicated on the assumption that females had membership in a family. Therefore, sala- ries for young women were even lower, often forcing them into multiple posi- tions, including prostitution. While prostitution did not increase in proportion to the growth of the city, concerns about venereal disease did. The language of depopulation again sur- faced, and there was the further fear that prostitution would undermine fami- lies. As the result of an administrative note of 1864, prostitutes could no longer refuse to register if they were in police custody or working in brothels.51 Indi- vidual liberty, it appeared, had been sacrificed to public protection. By 1878 and 1879, additional regulations supporting the police des moeurs (vice squad) had been added to remind madams of their service to the government; brothels
48 Ibid., pp. 80–107. 49 Ibid., p. 204. 50 Part, but not all, of this growth can be attributed to the expansion of the city limits. 51 Guyot, La prostitution, p. 62.
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Demographics of Late Nineteenth Century Prostitutes Prostitution during the last quarter of the century was directly related to women’s place in the economy and their personal circumstances. By 1876, the workforce in Paris was more than half female, and 80 per cent of those female workers were wage labourers. While it is difficult to know how many prosti- tutes in total (registered and unregistered) there were in Paris, the vice squad reported there were 4,242 registered prostitutes in 1872 and 5,440 in the 1880s. Almost 75 per cent were over 21, and the vast majority of them were born out- side of Paris. As registered prostitutes, they were considered to have no other occupation. Of the unregistered prostitutes who were arrested by the police, 39 per cent reported being domestic servants and 30 per cent were seamstress- es.54 According to one period writer, a garment worker could earn two or three francs per day, but even if she were healthy and never absent from work, her earnings would most often be insufficient to cover her expenses. Likely she would live in a garret and consume a diet of starchy food.55 Not only did wom- en’s salaries remain low, they declined relative to prices throughout the century. Furthermore, the percentage of single women in Paris increased as a result of the overall scarcity of jobs for females even in the rural areas surrounding Paris and more young women were cut off from their families. Writers like Parent- Duchâtelet and Commenge, who published his study of prostitution in 1894, bemoaned the poverty in which prostitutes typically found themselves, but
52 Ibid., pp. 64–65. 53 William Acton, “Prostitution in France”, as extracted from the edited 2nd edition by Peter Frye (London, 1968), pp. 97–107, available at: http://chnm.gmu.edu/history/faculty/kelly/ wciv/women/prostitution.htm; last accessed 7 July 2017. 54 Weston, “Prostitution in Paris”, ch. 2; Corbin, Women for Hire, p. 42. 55 Ibid., p. 53.
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Turn-of-the-Century Reform Efforts
The end of the nineteenth century brought new reasons to deal with pros- titution: the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts in England, the visits of international reformers like Josephine Butler, and the continuing spectre of venereal diseases. The new discourse of abolitionism combined civil liberties, double standards, medical reform, and the protection of women. Some aboli- tionists demanded the elimination of the vice squad while others established a crusade against immorality, debauchery, and the victimization of women. Although some momentum was gained through this abolitionist coalition, the governmental crisis of 1877 halted national debates. In the interim, the Union international des amies de la jeune fille stepped in to monitor employment bu- reaus and railroad stations which were widely seen as the hubs of the white slave trade. Just after the turn of the century, two other sources of abolitionist senti- ment rekindled the debate. Cases of venereal disease in France and among French troops in the colonies had increased alarmingly, and the international press thrived on exposés of white slavery. In Paris, for example, from 13 to 15 per cent of the male population was syphilitic,58 infants allegedly died at an alarm- ing rate, and, in its later stages, the ravishing disease could be undetectable. In the case of white slavery, it was argued that procurers established themselves at railway stations near the Tour Saint-Jacques in the city centre and on the heights of Montmartre providing promises of lodging and employment. By the time of the 1902 international conference on white slavery, newspapers widely reported that there was a traffic in virgins, suppliers were growing wealthy, and the overseas military was playing a role in creating demand for prosti- tutes.59 The results of the conference were promulgated in France in 1905, but
56 Commenge, La prostitution clandestine à Paris (Paris, 1897). 57 Corbin, Women for Hire, p. 30. 58 Ibid., p. 204. 59 Ibid., pp. 289–293.
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From the World Wars to Abolitionism
In the period just before World War i, neo-regulationism, toleration, and in- creased surveillance defined prostitution. During the war, prostitutes left Paris briefly, fearing that they would be confined to work camps, and three-quarters of the brothels closed. By the time of the armistice, however, new maisons de rendez-vous had been established, some of them quite deluxe. More policing occurred around railway stations and barracks, and sanitary measures were dramatically increased. Already in decline, the maisons de tolérance did not reappear; in fact, no more than thirty were in existence after the war.62 In the interwar period, as sexuality became less confined, dance halls, cinemas and theatres were combined with maisons de rendez-vous to draw clients into the establishments. Maisons d’abbatage also sprang up, offering quick sex without
60 Weston, “Prostitution in Paris”, p. 65. See also Emile Richard, La prostitution à Paris (Paris, 1890). Richard was a leading neo-regulationist. 61 Ibid., pp. 173, 178. Minors under the age of 21 were not to be registered, and those who were arrested could be taken from their parents as wards of the Bureau of Public Assistance. 62 Corbin, Women for Hire, pp. 334–336.
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63 Ibid., p. 339. 64 Patrick Buisson, Années érotiques: De la Grande Prostituée à la revanche des mâles (Paris, 2009), pp. 172–174. 65 Another view of the postwar environment leading to the closing of maisons de tolérance may be found in Mary Louise Roberts, “The Silver Foxhole: The gis and Prostitution in Paris, 1944–1945”, French Historical Studies, 33 (2010), pp. 99–128. She argues that the num- ber of American soldiers on leave in Paris destabilized the entire regulationist system. 66 Buisson, Années érotiques, p. 631. 67 Marthe Richard, Mon destin de femme (Paris, 1974), p. 336. Significant portions of Marthe Richard’s memoirs are fictionalized. See also Natacha Henry, Marthe Richard, l’aventurière des maisons closes (Paris, 2006).
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Abolitionism, French Equivocation, and Prostitute Protests
French policy toward the outward manifestations of prostitution officially changed from regulationism to abolitionism in 1960 when the French govern- ment ratified the un “Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others”.70 In spite of adopting an abolitionist position, the following three decades in France saw little change in the governmental response to prostitution. Police cleaned up the streets, defined offenses as they saw them, and acted on interpretations of the law be- cause there were few absolutes. Only in 1975, when police harassment became particularly visible, was there a visceral response by prostitutes themselves. The response began in Lyons on 2 June 1975, when nearly a hundred prosti- tutes occupied a church to bring media attention to police harassment. Paris prostitutes immediately joined what became a national demonstration, go- ing on strike and demanding health benefits and changes to the Penal Code.71 However, without continuing formal leadership, the movement died out by spring 1976. What had occurred was the beginning of a dramatic change. Prostitutes explicitly defined themselves as sex workers, became their own advocates, expressed their own grievances, sought allies, and began a social movement. Historically, regulationists and abolitionists had excluded prostitutes from de- bates about them. As such, prostitutes often were characterized as having no agency, being mere pawns because they had no choice, or being pathologically
68 “Loi n° 46–685 du 13 avril 1946 dite Marthe Richard tendant à la fermeture des maisons de tolérance et au renforcement de la lutte contre le proxénétisme”, Journal official de la République française (14 April 1946), pp. 3138–3139. 69 “Loi n° 46–795 du 24 avril 1946 portant institution d’un fichier sanitaire et social de la prostitution”, cited in Sarah-Marie Maffesoli, “Le traitement juridique de la prostitution”, Sociétés, 99 (2008), pp. 33–46, 39. 70 “Circulaire du 25 novembre 1960 à la repression du proxénétisme”. 71 Lilian Mathieu, “An Unlikely Mobilization: The Occupation of Saint-Nizier Church by the Prostitutes of Lyon”, Revue française de sociologie, 42 (supplement, 2001), pp. 107–131, 107.
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72 Idem., “The Emergence and Uncertain Outcomes of Prostitutes’ Social Movements”, The European Journal of Women’s Studies, 10 (2003), pp. 29–50, 30. 73 François-Rodolphe Ingold and Mohamed Toussirt, “Le travail sexuel, la consummation des drogues et le vih: Investigation ethnographique de la prostitution à Paris (1989–1993)”, Bulletin épidémiologique hebdomadaire, 27 (1994), pp. 119–120; for additional statistics, see also Anne Serre et al., “Conditions de vie de personnes prostituées: consequences sur la prevention de l’infection à vih”, Revue d’Epidémiologie et de Santé publique, 44 (1996), pp. 328–336. 74 “Code Pénal” (as amended); available at: http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCode.do?ci dTexte=LEGITEXT000006070719&dateTexte=19960810; last accessed 7 July 2017. See par- ticularly Book 2, Title 2, Chapter 5, Articles 225-4-1 to 225-4-9 and 225–5 to 225–12.
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75 Gill Allwood, “Prostitution Debates in France”, Contemporary Politics, 10 (2004), pp. 145–157, 145. 76 “French Prostitutes March against Ban on Soliciting”, The New York Times International, 5 November 2002, available at: http://nytimes.com/2002/11/05/international/05WIRE -FRANCE.html; last accessed 7 July 2017. 77 Statistics from the Office Central pour la répression de la traité des ȇtres humains, accord- ing to La Fondation Scelles; available at: http://www.fondationscelles.org/; last accessed 7 July 2017. The statistics date to 2011. 78 “Proxénétisme: des réseaux démantelés chaque année”, Le Figaro, 27 February 2012; avail- able at: http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2012/02/27/01016-20120227ARTFIG00544 -proxenetisme-la-realite-des-chiffres-en-france.php; last accessed 7 July 2017. 79 Handman and Mossuz-Lavau, La Prostitution à Paris.
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As the mayor’s enquiry progressed, certain areas in Paris came to be viewed as “prostitute-friendly” including the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes.80 Researchers interviewed their subjects in those areas, while also developing a classification of current prostitution. Unlike the taxonomies of Parent-Duchâtelet, twenty-first century prostitution is defined by location as a function of age, longevity as a sex worker, drugs, and nationality. Along the old streets in the centre of the city, traditional French prostitutes still remain. Averaging 40 years of age, they are viewed as vestiges of a certain Parisian life- style. Along the boulevards named for the marshals of France and around the old city customs barriers, one finds Africans and eastern Europeans. With the arrival of sex shops in the 1970s, more Chinese entered the trade. In the Bois de Boulogne, South-American transsexuals, along with other male prostitutes, work the winding paths and conduct their trade in parked cars. According to voyeurs, of whom there are many, there is a certain theatricality to the activi- ties in the Bois de Boulogne. In the Bois de Vincennes, on the eastern periphery of Paris, prostitution is more traditionally female, made up predominantly of African immigrants and conducted in panel trucks or vans.81 For the researchers involved in the mayor’s project, there was only one con- clusion: prostitutes who wished to leave sex work should be assisted in doing so, and the conditions for prostitutes who continued their profession should be ameliorated.82 To “exit” prostitution is costly, potentially dangerous, and fraught with delays. Prostitutes must pay retroactive taxes to the government; and, if they are immigrants, they must divulge the name of their pimp or pro- curer, leading to his or her arrest. If they do not have identity cards, they can be deported even if they inform on their pimp or procurer. Critics of the current system charge the government with acting as a pimp. It receives tax revenues from prostitutes and benefits from their earnings. While there is an historic and literary French nostalgia about prostitution, new, young, non-French, racially and ethnically diverse prostitutes have not been romanticized. Instead, the discourse about prostitution has left pros- titutes entangled in a web of contradictory practices. While prostitution re- mains a civil liberty, the increasing number of foreign sex workers, the assaults on neighbourhood security by crime cartels, and illegal immigration have all placed sex work in the popular press and on the floor of the National Assembly. In December 2011, French deputies, both of the left and right, adopted a non- binding resolution reconfirming the un Convention of 1960 and the proposed
80 Ibid., p. 13. 81 Ibid., pp. 48–60. 82 Ibid., p. 16.
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83 Kim Willsher, “Scandal-weary France to Vote on Outlawing Prostitution”, The Observer, 3 December 2011; available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/04/france -prostitution-scandal-imprisonment/; last accessed 7 July 2017. 84 The intent was to prohibit procurers, pimps, and organized prostitution in accord with the un Convention while confirming individual liberty. 85 France 24 coverage of the National Assembly vote, available at: http://www.france24 .com/en/20131204-french-assembly-parliament-votes-fine-pay-sex-clients-prostitution/; last accessed 7 July 2017. 86 Report of the Commission spéciale chargée d’examiner la proposition de loi renforçant la lutte contre le système prostitutionnel, available at: www.senat.fr/commission/spec/lutte _contre_le_systeme_prostitutionnel/index.html; last accessed 7 July 2017. 87 France 24 coverage of the femen protest on 17 July 2014, available at: http://www.france24 .com/en/20140717-femen-members-do-topless-protest-french-senate-prostitution/; last accessed 7 July 2017. 88 “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.
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