Some protectors shine by their sexual power, and are at the same time the real lovers of the prostitutes, who keep them, and are plundered by them. While they submit to coitus with their clients without any pleasure, and only simulate voluptuous sensations, they abandon themselves to their protectors or lovers with ardor. It is needless to add that the protectors are often criminals, or of the criminal type. Those who are well acquainted with prostitution declare that it would be impossible without the protector, who is at the same time the friend, protector and exploiter of the prostitute, while the brothel keeper is only concerned with her wholesale systematic exploitation.
Brothels and Proxenets.—Under the pretext of avoiding the dangers of prostitution in the streets, brothels were organized. These are generally managed by an elderly female profligate, often in partnership with a "husband," who is only a superior kind of protector. Officially, the prostitutes are free lodgers in the brothel, but in reality they are often prisoners or slaves. They are well fed and dressed in a way to attract the clients as much as possible. Clothes, food, etc., are placed to their account and the crafty brothel keeper generally manages to get them into debt so as to always remain their creditor. In this way these miserable outcasts of society, who are generally incapable of claiming their legal rights, are more or less reduced to slavery. Apparently they are free, but in reality they can hardly leave the house without paying their debts, and the brothel keeper who wishes to keep them arranges so that they cannot pay it.
It is not always easy to distinguish between the different classes of prostitutes: the prostitute of the brothel, the street prostitute under inscription or not, the private prostitute and lorette or grisette. Sometimes a woman may rise from one class to another; but more often she falls lower and lower.
We may mention here one of the dangers of brothels. Their good organization, their medical supervision, etc., are extolled; but the great danger of the arithmetical progression of mutations in sexual intercourse is ignored. While a private prostitute rarely receives more than one client in an evening, and is not absolutely obliged to receive more, every prostitute in a brothel is forced to receive as many as present themselves. A girl may thus have connection with men twenty or thirty times in the same night.
Under certain circumstances, for instance at the time of conscription for recruits at Brussels, the brothels are besieged to such a point that one man has hardly time to finish coitus before another comes to take his place. It is obvious that such "file firing" greatly increases the danger of venereal infection, since a single infected person is sufficient to contaminate innumerable clients (even without the woman herself becoming infected).
It is often denied that the brothel is a prison, yet this fact has been often demonstrated. When, as in France, the police can arrest a prostitute at pleasure—often a virtuous young girl who is taken for such—and put her on the inscription list, the thing is obvious. I have treated a girl who became the mistress of a police agent in Paris under the threat of being inscribed as a prostitute.
Again, besides the debts we have spoken of, the proxenets have many other ways of keeping prostitutes under their dependence. It is very difficult for ignorant girls, placed under the ban of society, to return to a free and virtuous life. But if a girl shows signs of wishing to leave a brothel, heroic measures are adopted, in the form of international exchange. A girl who is unacquainted with the language of the country is naturally more incapable of gaining her freedom than one who does. This is one of the reasons why the brothels of different countries exchange their women.
This expedient, which also satisfies clients who desire a change, leads to the exportation of women from one country to another, under false pretenses, such as the promise of lucrative and easy situations. In this way young Swiss girls are exported to Hungary, Hungarians to Switzerland, Germans to France, French to England, Europeans to Buenos-Ayres, creoles to Europe, etc. For example, if a young French girl has been exported to Buda-Pest or Buenos-Ayres, we may be certain that she will lose all inclination to run away; for what can she do—a stranger without a cent, with her ignorance and want of character, alone in the streets, when she does not understand a word of the language?
White Slavery.—The modern commerce in female slaves of civilized Europe destined for prostitution is closely connected with the facts we have just described. The manner in which brothels exchange their merchandise only concerns one side of the question. The principal art consists in obtaining young girls, of twelve to seventeen years of age, for the brothels. This traffic is formally prohibited by most laws; but what are laws made for, if not to be broken? There are so many means of training children under some pretext or other, before they are independent enough to escape this life of infamy. There are so many depraved or hungry parents who are ready to sell their children if, in hypocritical but transparent language, a good situation is promised them with payment in advance.
During a railway journey, I was myself a witness of the manner in which a young girl of twelve was sold in this way and sent to Pressburg. I was also simple enough to try and appeal for the intervention of a consul and an ambassador to prevent the perpetration of the crime. They only replied by shrugging their shoulders. How could I prove the matter before a tribunal? The child was accompanied by a woman who admitted to me that there could hardly be any other question than the sale of the child for prostitution. She had only been ordered to take the child to Vienna, where they would come and take her. This shows the impotence of any person who tries to prevent such infamies.