It is difficult to estimate the number of prostitutes—impossible to determine it exactly. The police may approximately determine the number of women for whom prostitution is the sole or chief source of income, but they can not determine the far greater number of those who resort to prostitution as a partial support. Nevertheless the numbers that have been determined are enormous. According to Oettingen at the close of the sixties of the last century the number of prostitutes in London was estimated to be 80,000. In Paris on January 1, 1906, the number of enrolled prostitutes was 6,196, but more than one-third of these manage to evade police and medical control. In 1892 there were about 60 public brothels in Paris, harboring from 600 to 700 prostitutes; in 1900 there were only 42. Their number is constantly decreasing (In 1852 there were 217 public brothels). At the same time the number of private prostitutes has greatly increased. An investigation, undertaken by the municipal council of Paris in 1889, estimated that the number of women who sell their bodies had reached the enormous figure of 120,000. The chief of police of Paris, Léfrine, estimates the number of enrolled prostitutes at 6,000 and the number of private prostitutes at 70,000. During the years 1871 to 1903 the police inhibited 725,000 harlots and 150,000 were imprisoned. During the year 1906, the number of those who were inhibited amounted to no less than 56,196.[106]
The following numbers of prostitutes were enrolled with the Berlin police: In 1886, 3006; in 1890, 4,039; in 1893, 4,663; in 1897, 5,098; in 1899, 4,544, and in 1905, 3,287. In 1890 six physicians were employed, who performed examinations for two hours daily. Since then the number of physicians has been increased to twelve, and since several years a female physician has been employed to perform these examinations, notwithstanding the objections of many male physicians. In Berlin, as in Paris, the enrolled prostitutes only constitute a small fraction of the entire number, that authorities on this subject have estimated to be at least 50,000. In the single year 1890 there were 2,022 waitresses in the cafés of Berlin, who, with very few exceptions were given to prostitution. The yearly increase in the number of harlots inhibited by the police also shows that prostitution in Berlin is growing. The numbers of those inhibited were: In 1881, 10,878; in 1890, 16,605; in 1896, 26,703: in 1897, 22,915. In the year 1907 17,018 harlots were brought to trial before the magistrates, which was about 57 for each day the court was in session.
How large is the number of prostitutes throughout Germany? Some claim that there are about 200,000. Stroehmberg estimates the number of enrolled and private prostitutes in Germany to be between 75,000 and 100,000. In 1908 Kamillo K. Schneider attempted to determine the exact number of enrolled prostitutes. His table for the year 1905 includes 79 cities. “As besides these there are other large places in which a considerable number of girls may be found, he believes 15,000 to be a fairly correct estimate of the entire number. With a population of approximately 60,600,000 inhabitants that means one enrolled prostitute for 4,040 inhabitants.” In Berlin there is one prostitute for 608, in Breslau for 514, in Hannover for 529, in Kiel for 527, in Danzig for 487, in Cologne for 369, and in Brunswick for 363 inhabitants. The number of enrolled prostitutes is constantly decreasing.[107] According to various estimates the ratio of the number of public controlled prostitutes is to the number of private prostitutes, as 1 to 5, or 1 to 10. We are, accordingly dealing with a vast army of those to whom prostitution is a means of subsistence, and conformably great is the number of victims claimed by disease and death.
That the great majority of prostitutes grows thoroughly tired of their mode of life, that it even becomes revolting to them, is an experience on which all authorities are agreed. But very few of those who have fallen victims to prostitution ever find an opportunity to escape from it. In 1899 the Hamburg branch of the British, Continental and General Federation undertook an investigation among prostitutes. Although only few answered the questions put to them, these answers are quite characteristic. To the question “Would you continue in this trade if you could find some other means of support?” one replied, “What can one do when one is despised by all people?” Another replied, “I appealed for help from the hospital”; a third, “My friend released me by paying my debts.” All suffer from the slavery of their liabilities to the brothel keepers. One gave the information that she owed her landlady $175. Clothes, underwear, finery, everything is furnished by the keepers at fabulous prices; they are also charged the highest prices for food and drink. Besides, they must pay the keeper a daily sum for their room. This rent amounts to $1.50, $2 or $3 daily. One wrote that she was compelled to pay her procurer from $5 to $6 daily. No keeper will permit a girl to depart unless she has paid her debts. The statements made by these girls also cast an unfavorable light on the actions of the police, who side more with the brothel keepers than with the helpless girls. In short, we here behold in the midst of Christian civilization, the worst kind of slavery. In order to better maintain the interests of their trade, the brothel keepers have even founded a trade paper that is international in character.
The number of prostitutes increases at the same rate at which the number of working women increases, who find employment in various lines of trade at starvation wages. Prostitution is fostered by the industrial crises that have become inevitable in bourgeois society, and to hundreds of thousands of families mean bitter need and desperate poverty. A letter sent by the chief of police, Bolton, to a factory inspector on October 31, 1865, shows that during the crisis of the English cotton industry caused by the Civil War in the United States, the number of young prostitutes increased more than during the preceding twenty-five years.[108] But not only working girls fall victims to prostitution. Its victims are also recruited from the “higher professions.” Lombroso and Ferrero quote Macé,[109] who says of Paris: “The certificate of a governess of a higher or lower grade is far less an assignment to a means of support than to suicide, theft and prostitution.”
Parent-Duchatelet has at one time compiled statistics which showed the following. Among 5,183 prostitutes there were 1,441 who were driven to prostitution by utmost need and misery. 1,225 were orphans and poor. 86 had become prostitutes to support old parents, young brothers and sisters, or their own children. 1,425 had been deserted by their lovers; 404 had been seduced by officers and soldiers and had been carried off to Paris. 289 had been servant girls who were seduced by their employers and subsequently discharged, and 280 had come into Paris to seek employment.
Mrs. Butler, the ardent champion of the poorest and most unfortunate of her sex, says: “Accidental circumstances, the death of a father or a mother, unemployment, insufficient wages, poverty, false promises, seduction, the laying of snares may have driven her into her misfortune.” Very instructive is the information given by Karl Schneidt in a pamphlet on “The Misery of Waitresses in Berlin,”[110] in regard to the causes that drive so many of them to prostitution. He says that a surprisingly large number of servant girls become waitresses, which means in nearly all cases that they become prostitutes. Among the answers Schneidt received to his list of questions that he circulated among waitresses are the following: “Because I became pregnant by my employer and had to support my child”; “because my book of references was spoiled”; “because I could not earn enough by sewing and such work”; “because I had been discharged from the factory and could not find other employment”; “because my father died and there were four younger ones at home,” etc. That servant girls, who have been seduced by their employers, constitute a large quota of the prostitutes is a well known fact. Dr. Max Taube[111] makes some very incriminating statements concerning the great number of seductions of servant girls by employers or their sons. The upper classes also furnish their quota to prostitution. Here poverty is not the cause, but seduction, the inclination to lead a frivolous life, the love of dress and enjoyment. A pamphlet on “Fallen Girls and Police Control”[112] contains the following statement in regard to the prostitutes from these classes: “Horror stricken many a worthy citizen, minister, teacher, public official or military man learns that his daughter is secretly addicted to prostitution. If all these daughters could be named a social revolution would have to take place, or the public ideas concerning virtue and morality would be seriously impaired.” The high class prostitutes, the smart set among them, are drawn from these circles. A great many actresses also owing to a glaring disparity between their salary and the cost of their wardrobe, are compelled to resort to this vile means of support.[113] The same is true of many other girls who are employed as salesladies and in similar positions. Many employers are so infamous that they seek to justify low wages by hinting at the assistance from “friends.” Seamstresses, dressmakers, milliners, factory workers numbering many thousands are subjected to the same conditions. Employers and their assistants, merchants, landed proprietors, etc., frequently regard it as their privilege to make female workers and employees subservient to their lusts. Our pious conservatives like to point to the rural conditions in regard to morality as a sort of ideal compared to the large cities and industrial districts. But whoever is acquainted with the conditions knows that they are not ideal. We find this opinion confirmed by a lecture delivered by the owner of a knightly estate in the fall of 1889, which newspapers in Saxony reported in the following manner:
“Grimma. Dr. v. Waechter, owner of a knightly estate, at a meeting of the diocese which was held here delivered a lecture on sexual immorality in our rural communities, in which local conditions were depicted in no favorable light. With great frankness the lecturer admitted that the employers themselves, even the married ones, frequently maintained intimate relations with their female employees, and that the results of such relations were either atoned for by a payment of money or were hidden from the eyes of the world by a crime. Unfortunately it could not be denied, that immorality was introduced into the rural districts not only by country girls who had been employed in the cities as wet nurses and by boys who had become demoralized while serving in the army, but also by educated men, by managers of the large estates and army officers, who come into the country during manoeuvres. Dr. v. Waechter claims that here in the country there actually are few girls who have attained their seventeenth birthday without having fallen.” The honest lecturer had to pay for his love of truth by being socially ostracised by the offended officers. Reverend Dr. Wagner had a similar experience when he ventured to say some disagreeable truths to the landed proprietors in his book on “Morality in the Country.”[114]
The majority of prostitutes are driven into their unfortunate trade at an age at which they cannot be regarded as competent to judge their actions. Among the women who secretly prostituted themselves arrested in Paris from 1878 until 1887, 12,615 equal 46.7 per cent. were minors. Of those arrested from 1888–1898, 14,072 equal 48.8 per cent. were minors. Le Pilleurs gives the following resumé of the prostitutes of Paris, which is as concise as it is pathetic: “Defloured at 16, prostituted at 17, afflicted with syphilis at 18.”[115] Among 846 newly enrolled prostitutes in Berlin in 1898 there were 229 minors. There were: