William Acton, Excerpts from
Prostitution, Considered (1857; 1870)
William Acton was a British medical doctor
and social reformer of the Victorian era, who among other things was
an outspoken critic of masturbation, especially in young people. His
book, Prostitution, Considered in Its Moral, Social, and
Sanitary Aspects, in London and Other Large Cities and Garrison
Towns, with Proposals for the Mitigation and Prevention of Its
Attendant Evils offered a somewhat sympathetic view of women
sex workers, even as he sought ways to rescue them from what he saw
as lives of moral depravity.
The order may be divided into
three classes — the " kept woman" (a
repulsive term, for which I have
in vain sought an English substitute),
who has in truth, or pretends
to have, but one paramour, with
whom she, in some cases, resides ;
the common prostitute, who is at
the service, with slight reservation,
of the first comer, and attempts
no other means of life; and the
woman whose prostitution is a
subsidiary calling.
The presence of the individual
in either of these categories
may of course depend upon a
thousand accidents ; but once in
either rank, as a general rule
her footing is permanent while
her prostitution, in any sense of
the word, continues. There is,
although the moralist insist otherwise,
little promotion, and less
degradation. The cases of the latter
are quite exceptional; those of
the former less rare, but still
not frequent. The seduction and
primary desertion of each woman
who afterwards becomes a prostitute is
an affair apart; and the liaison
of a woman with her seducer is
generally of the shortest. This
over, her remaining in the ranks
of honest society, or her
adoption of prostitution, becomes her
question. Some few voluntarily take
the latter alternative. Domestic servants,
and girls of decent family, are
generally driven headlong to the
streets for support of themselves
and their babies ; needlewomen of some
classes by the incompatibility of
infant
nursing with the discipline of
the workshop. Those who take
work at home are fortunate enough,
and generally too happy, to
reconcile continuance of their labours
with a mother's nursing duties,
and by management retain a permanent
connexion with the army of labour,
adopting prostitution only when their
slender wages become insufficient for
their legitimate wants.
Thus the ouvrière
class — corresponding to the grisette
of the French writers — and the
promiscuous class of prostitutes — answering
to their lorettes,
are accounted for. Our first, or
superior order, recruits its ranks as
follows : —
1. From women cohabiting
with, or separately maintained by,
their seducers.
2. From kept women who are,
as it were, in the business,
and transfer their allegiance from
party to party at the dictates
of caprice or financial expediency.
3. From women whom men select
for a thousand and one reasons,
from promiscuous orders — or, as
commonly said, " take off the town."
4. From women similarly promoted
from the ouvrière class.
The prominent or retiring position
the individual occupies in these three
divisions — allowing, of course, for
exceptions influenced by her idiosyncrasies —
depends mainly upon gaiety or
gravity of temperament. These
characteristics exaggerated, on the
one hand, into boisterous vulgarity,
on the other, into nervous retirement
— both chequered, more or less, at
times, by extreme depression and
hysterical mirth — pervade the devotees to
this calling, and influence their
whole career. A woman endowed with
the one may, for a time,
by force of circumstances, assume the
other — but for a time only. The
spring recoils, and the natural
character asserts its sway. It
is superfluous almost to allude, among
men of the world, to the
arrogant and offensive conduct into
which some prostitutes of the
upper class, and of mercurial
temperament, will be betrayed, even
when permitted to elbow respectability
and good conduct in public places;
or to their intense assumption of
superiority over their less full-blown
sisters, on the strength of an
equipage, an opera box, a
saddle-horse, a Brompton villa, and
a visiting list. This is the kind
of woman of whom I said
just now that the loss of her
honour seemed to have intensified
every evil point in her character.
She it is who inflicts the
greatest scandal and damage upon
society, and by whom, though she
is but a fraction of her
class, the whole are necessarily, but
injudiciously, if not cruelly, judged.
This is flaunting, extravagant queen,
who, young and fair — the milliners'
herald of forthcoming fashions — will
daily drag a boyish lover (for
whose abject submission she will
return tolerable constancy, and over
whose virtue she presides like
another Dian), will he, nill he,
like a lacquey, in her train to
Blackwall parties, flower shows, and
races — night after night to the "
select ballet balls," plays, or
public dancing saloons — will see him
gaily, along with jockeys who
are no gentlemen and gentlemen who
are all jockey, through his
capital or his allowances, and then,
without a sigh, enlist in the
service of another — perhaps his intimate
friend — till she has run the
gauntlet as kept mistress through
half-a-dozen short generations of men
about town.
Descend a step to the
promiscuous category, and trace the
harlot to whom a tavern-bar was
congenial instead of repulsive on
her first appearance there — say at
sixteen or eighteen years of
age. At thirty and at forty you
will find her (if she rises
in the scale) the loudest of the
loud, in the utmost blaze of
finery, looked on as " first-rate
company" by aspiring gents, surrounded
by a knot of "gentlemen" who
applaud her rampant nonsense, and
wondering, hotel-sick, country men of
business, whose footsteps stray at
night to where she keeps her
foolish court. She is a sort of
whitewashed sepulchre, fair to the
eye, but full of inner rottenness — a
mercenary human tigress ; albeit there
exists at times some paltry bull
dog, nursed in the same Bohemian
den, who may light up all the
fires of womanhood within her — some
rascally enchanter, who may tame her
at the height of her fury,
when none else human may approach
her, by whispering or blows. Exigeant
of respect beyond belief, but
insufferably rude, she is proud
and high-minded in talk one moment,
but not ashamed to beg for
a shilling the next. The great
sums of money she sometimes
earns, she spends with romantic
extravagance, on her toilette partly,
and partly circulates, with thoughtless
generosity, among the lodging-house
sharks and other baser parasites
that feed upon her order.
Should such a light-minded woman
descend in the scale of promiscuous
prostitution, which of course is
a matter of possibility, though
not so likely as her rise, she
will still be found the Same.
As no access of fortune will do
much towards humanizing, so no
ill-luck will soften or chasten her.
She will be in Lambeth or
Whitechapel as I have described her
in Soho or the Haymarket — a
drunken, brawling reprobate— but in a
lower orbit.
On the other hand, the sad
career in prostitution of the
softer-minded woman, in whatever rank
she may be, will be marked
and affected by that quality. Whatever
befal her in this vale of
tears, the gentle-minded woman "will
be gentle still ; and with this
native hue will be tinged all
her dealings with the sisterhood,
and with the rough rude males
whom ever and anon it is
her fate to meet. If fortunate
enough to have the acquaintance of
some quiet men of means, she
will not be puffed up with
vain-gloriousness, but seeking comfort
in obscurity, and clinging fast to
what respect she may gain of
others, will profess — what I dare say
she really often feels — disgust at
brazen impudence, and all the pomps
and vanities. Whether this eschewal
be from real delicacy,
or considerations of economy, or
because any sort of notoriety, instead
of cementing, as in the case
of others mentioned, would be
fatal to their particular liaison, it
is hard to say ; but, however
that may be, it is no less
true that hundreds of females so
constituted are at this moment living
within a few miles of Charing
Cross, in easy if not elegant
circumstances, with every regard to
outward decorum and good taste, and
shocking none of the public who
will not attempt unnecessarily close
investigation, but for all that "
in a state of prostitution." The
ease and comparative prosperity that
inflates the lighter woman into
a public nuisance have no such
effect upon such a one as
I have spoken of last. They but
cause her to prize each day more
highly peace and quietness — more
sadly to regret the irrevocable past —
more profoundly to yearn after some
way out of the wilderness.
Among the promiscuous prostitutes of
the milder order will be found a
numerous band, who, unlike the
magnificent virago of the
supper-shops, rarely see the evening
lamps. Sober, genteelly dressed, well
ordered, often elegant in person —
such girls have the taste and
the power to select their
acquaintances from among the most
truly eligible men whom the present
false state of society debars
from marriage. Their attractions, indeed,
are of the subdued order that
neither the hot blood of the
novice nor the prurient fancy of
the used-up rake could appreciate. Of
course, they take the chances of
their calling. They know that a
short acquaintance often turns their
sorrow into joy, and opens out a
better, happier future. They know,
too, that one unlucky
hour may make them scatterers of
pestilence. What wonder, then, that
woman's tact, sharpened by uses
of adversity, should induce them to
prefer the respect and counsel
of well-bred men of settled character
to the evanescent passion of
mere youths. From the former
they get lessons, rarely thrown away,
on the value of repose and
thrift; from the latter, only new
proofs of folly and fickleness.
With the one they may for a
time forget their occupation; with
the other, only sharpen memory. They
exhibit at times the greatest
respect for themselves, and for the
opinions, scruples, and weaknesses of
those with whom they are connected,
and whom they love to call
their " friends ;" and, above all,
they are notable for the intensity
of love with which they will
cling to the sister, the mother,
the brother — in fact, to any
one "from home" who, knowing of
their fall, will not abjure
them, or, ignorant of their present
calling, still cherishes some respect
and regard for them. The sick
man is safe in their hands, and
the fool's money also. There is
many a tale well known of their
nursing and watching, and more
than will do so could tell of
the harlot's guardianship in his
hour of drunkenness. I have seen
the fondest of daughters and
mothers among them. I fancy that
where they have that regard for
men which they are too pleased
to return for mere politeness, they are
well-meaning, and not always foolish friends
— no abettors of extravagance, and,
so far as absolute honesty is
concerned, implicitly to be relied on.
They are more dupes than impostors —
more sinned against than sinning —
till the play is played out, the
pilgrimage accomplished, and they who
have long strained their eyes for
a resting-place quit the painful road
— as I say they mostly do — for
a better life on earth ; or,
leaving hope behind on their discharge
from the hospitals, issue to an
obscurity more melancholy and degraded
than ever. For of such on
whom has fallen the lot of foul
disease, or whom a loss of
health or beauty has deprived of
worthy associates, are the abject
maundering creatures who haunt the
lower dens of
vice and crime. Deficient in
mental and physical elasticity to
resist the downward pressure of
intermittent starvation and undying conscience,
they are pulled from depth to
lower deep, by men who trample,
and women of their class who
prey upon them. Liquor, which
other organizations adopt as a jovial
friend and partner of each gleam
of sunshine, is to these the
medicine and permanent aggravation of
dejected misery. Cruelly injured by
the other sex, they moodily
resolve to let retribution take its
course through their diseased agency;
trodden under foot by society, what
can society expect from them but
scorn for scorn?
The woman, the castle of whose
modesty offered stoutest resistance to
the storm of the seducer, often
becomes in time the most abiding
stronghold of vice. Saturated with
misery and drink, perhaps then crime
and disease, dead long in heart,
and barely willing to live on
in the flesh — ceasing to look
upwvard, ceasing to strike outward,
she will passively drift down the
stream into that listless state
of moral insensibility in which so
many pass from this world into
the presence of their Judge.
Source:
https://archive.org/details/prostitutioncons00acto/page/28/mode/2up