Austria.
In Austria public brothels are not tolerated by the police, and public women are sent into the houses of correction; but this legislative enactment will not convey a true idea to a foreigner of the actual state of morality throughout the country. Strangers, and those whom for want of a better designation we will term closet moralists, who draw their conclusions from primâ facie evidence, would be inclined to consider the territory governed by the house of Hapsburg almost, if not entirely, free from vice, because the streets of the capital and other towns are almost free from the spectacles that disfigure the pavé in other well-known places of cosmopolitan pilgrimage and resort. But we shall prove the reverse to be the case not only in Vienna, but throughout the kingdom.
Austria is an amalgamation of conquered countries which require an enormous standing army to keep in subjection, hence it very naturally follows that the moral sense is deadened in many districts to an alarming extent; and this is the invariable result of military despotism, for the sense of morality which is essentially the result of education, is never so acute as in free and well-governed countries.
The extent and population of the different states that comprise the Austrian empire is thus estimated in the official reports of 1851.
| Provinces. | Area in Sq. Miles. | Population, 1851. |
|---|---|---|
| German—Austria, Archduchy | 15,052 | 2,390,376 |
| —— Tyrol, Principality | 10,981 | 859,700 |
| —— Styria, Duchy | 8,670 | 1,006,971 |
| Sclavonian—Illyria, Kingdom | 10,960 | 1,291,196 |
| —— Bohemia, Kingdom | 20,203 | 4,409,900 |
| —— Moravia and Silesia, Margravate | 10,239 | 2,238,424 |
| —— Dalmatia, Kingdom | 5,067 | 393,715 |
| Magyar—Hungary, with Sclavonia, &c., and Croatia, Kingdom | 89,040 | 10,158,939 |
| —— Transylvania, Grand Principality | 21,390 | 2,073,737 |
| —— Military frontier | 15,179 | 1,009,109 |
| Polish—Galicia and Bukovina, Kingdom | 33,538 | 4,936,303 |
| Italian—Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom | 17,511 | 5,007,472 |
| Total | 257,830 | 35,776,842 |
In the capital itself, the lowest and most moderate computation allows the number of prostitutes to be 15,000. These are under police supervision, although they are not licensed. The officers of justice have the power of making domiciliary visits, and enter their dwellings at any hour of the day or night. If they are discovered in the streets after a certain hour they may be apprehended, and this to a great extent prevents that parade and ostentation that is observable in most European cities of any size and note. We are informed on reliable authority (Wilde) that almost one in every two children born in Vienna is “illegitimate,” which evidences very clearly that the more restrictions you place upon public immorality, so much the more do you increase private vice; from 1830 to 1837, the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births was as ten to twelve in Vienna. In Austria registers of births, deaths, and marriages, are kept by each minister of the church for his parish, and also by the Jewish Rabbi for those of their own persuasion. The register of births records the year, month, and day of birth, the number of the house in which the birth occurred, the name of the child and its sex, and whether it be born in wedlock or illegitimate, the names and surnames of the parents, their religion and the names and surnames and condition of the sponsors. In the case of illegitimate children the name of the father cannot be entered unless he acknowledges the paternity. The register of marriages records the year, month, and day of the marriage, the place of solemnization, the names and surnames of the parties, their religion, age, and whether single or widowed, and the names, surnames, and condition of the witnesses.
If a woman makes an application to the lying-in hospital and states her poverty, she is simply asked are you legitimately or illegitimately with child. The success of her suit depends in a great measure upon her reply, for if she says I am pregnant illegitimately she is admitted on the spot, sometimes in the fifth or sixth month of her pregnancy, generally in the seventh. They present her with an imperial livery to wear, carefully preserving her old clothes until she departs. After delivery she has to nurse her own child, sometimes another’s, and when she goes away she gets a bonus of five shillings, thus actually receiving a premium for losing her virtue. For the two first months of its existence the child is nurtured by its mother, it is then sent into the country at the public expense; and if a male it is always welcome in an Austrian peasant’s family, for if they can rear it to eighteen years of age, it is rendered up to the conscription instead of the eldest son of its adopted father. Education is very general in Austria. The law of 1821 enacts that no male shall enter the marriage state who is not able to read, write, and understand casting up accounts. This is a serious restriction to connubial bliss amongst the industrial classes; but the law is still more arbitrary, it makes these qualifications as it were indispensable to a man’s existence. It further says, no master of any trade shall without paying a heavy penalty employ workmen who are not able to read and write, and that small books of moral tendency shall be published and distributed at the lowest possible price to all the Emperor’s subjects.
Mr. McGregor says, “The provisions of this law appear to me to be pretty generally put in force, for I have nowhere in Austria met with any one under thirty years of age who was not able to read and write, and I have found cheap publications, chiefly religious and moral tracts, almanacks, very much like ‘Poor Richard’s,’ containing, with tables of the month, moon’s age, sun’s rising and setting, the fasts, feasts, holidays, markets, and fairs in the Empire, and opposite to the page of each month appropriate advice relative to husbandry and rural economy, with moral sayings and suitable maxims. The spirit of elementary instruction, if not the most enlightened, inculcates at every step, morality, the advantage of a virtuous life, the evil of vice, and the misery consequent on crime.” Works of art are subjected like books to the censors, who are unremitting in the enforcement of their political, moral, and religious restrictions.