London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

by Henry Mayhew

The prostitutes who congregate in the seaport towns have not been particularly described. They appear to be divided into classes: those who cohabit temporarily with the Malays, are paid a certain price, and exchange their residence; those who prostitute themselves indiscriminately to all comers; and those who are supported by the sailors, and profligate Chinese, who invariably create such a class wherever they settle. Of their numbers we have no account, nor of their modes of life; but it is certain they exist in considerable numbers[68].

PROSTITUTION AMONG THE SEMI-CIVILIZED NATIONS.

Introduction.

Surveying the social aspects of the globe, we discover an immense range occupied by races partially civilized, which connect the barbarian with the polished communities. Some of these, perhaps, are placed below European nations rather because they differ from, than because they are inferior to them.

The influence of every great religion is powerful in various divisions of the vast range. Buddha and Bramah have their millions of worshippers in China, India, and the intervening regions. The prophet is followed by whole nations in eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. Christianity has numerous adherents on the plains of Syria, Palestine, and the countries of Asia Minor. An equal variety of institutions prevails among these half-educated races. British policy in India; paternal despotism in China; republican simplicity in Arabia, Celebes, and Afghanistan; religious tyranny in the empire of the Porte; and patriarchal freedom among the nomades of Asia Minor, exercise different influences on this mighty and mixed population. In some we find a singular purity of manners, as among the Bedouins of Arabia; with others, morals are more gross than among the worst savages; but in all there is a perceptible contrast between the civilized states of Europe on the one hand, and the barbarian countries of Africa, Australasia, and the Pacific, on the other.

The position of the female sex among half-civilized races, as among all others, may be taken as a standard to measure their progress. It differs, in some remarkable particulars, from that occupied by women in purely savage or highly-civilized communities. In the one, where any regulations exist they are rude and coarse, and only obeyed where their action is constant, which it seldom is. In the other, men fear blame more than the law, and manners perform what legislation is unable to accomplish. In most of the countries of which we are now treating, government endeavours to rule with parental discipline the minutest concerns of life, to affix a penalty to every fault, to adjust with nicety the slightest relations of individuals with individuals, to guard morals by police and suppress profligacy by imperative decrees. So it is in China, so in Japan, and so in a less degree in the dominions of every Asiatic prince. In Egypt Mohammed Ali attempted, by one stroke of his pen, to blot out the stain of prostitution. He banished the old professors of that class, and new ones were created from the remainder of the population. In Persia a royal decree forbade prostitution, and men immediately prostituted the right of marriage to evade the law. In China the Emperors have, from time to time, fulminated proclamations against all profligate persons; but they have flung their invectives into the void, and no impression has been produced. The coarse and awkward efforts of a barbarian despot’s will never produce any better result. The Draconic decree is promulgated and the offences it is intended to suppress continue to be perpetrated as before. A distinction must be drawn, however, between those communities in which severe laws are enacted to produce, and those in which they are inspired by, public morality. In the one case they are worthless, because they are in hostility to the prevailing system; in the other they are the signification, because they are the embodiment, of the national feeling. They may be symptoms, but they can never be causes, of virtuous manners.

The view of the half-civilized nations, which is here presented, includes sketches of India, of Afghanistan, Kashmir, the Hindu-Chinese races, China, Japan, Celebes, Ceylon, Persia, Egypt, the Barbary States, Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor, Arabia, and Turkey. In all of them polygamy exists, though to a very small extent in Ceylon. It will be seen that the popular ideas on this subject are somewhat exaggerated. Most persons unaccustomed to read, or reflect, imagine that throughout the East all men have their harems filled with wives, who are beautiful prisoners, immured in perpetual seclusion, slaves to the will of their lord, and never allowed to move unless guarded by a fierce black eunuch, or a duenna still more dark and angry. It is left for those who are accustomed to peruse the accounts of veracious travellers, to know that polygamy, though allowed to almost all, is practically a privilege only of the rich, and not indulged in even by the majority of these. The general notions, also, of female seclusion are extravagant. Women in Turkey enjoy far more liberty than is usually imagined. So do they even in China, though very wealthy husbands, especially among the Hindus, shut up their wives and never allow a stranger’s glance to fall upon their countenances. This excessive jealousy is not always disagreeable to the objects of it; indeed, in the harem where three or four wives are congregated, the youngest and most beautiful sometimes makes it her chief triumph over her mortified rivals, that she is watched, guarded, shaded even from the light, and immured beyond the sound of a man’s voice, while they are far less religiously secluded. Thus the sex, influenced during ages by a peculiar system of manners, accommodates itself to them, invariably sinking or rising to the level assigned it by the civilization of the period.

Throughout the world the numerical disparity of the sexes is nowhere such as to induce the belief that polygamy is natural to certain countries. It is practised in many where the females are less numerous than the males, in consequence of infanticide. Everywhere, when extensively prevalent, it produces injurious results, diminishing the fecundity of women, and by no means preventing men from encouraging a class of professional prostitutes. There is, indeed, in this idea, something debasing to the female sex. That men should multiply their wives that they may not be induced to visit harlots, appears to degrade the institution of marriage, which was not intended for the satisfaction of sensual appetites, but for the continuation of the human species. Polygamy is opposed to increase, and thus appears unnatural; still more revolting to our ideas of civilization is the custom of polyandrism, or one wife with many husbands. It obtains in some regions of the Himalaya, among the Nairs of Malabar, and in the Cingalese kingdom of Kandy. Nowhere else do we find more than a trace of it, and it is singular to find a practice so utterly repugnant to the general sense of Orientals, prevailing close to the region in which men are most jealous and women most carefully guarded. In Hindustan some men will not divorce a wife whom they thoroughly dislike, because they will not allow her to be unveiled by a stranger; yet among the neighbouring Hindu-Chinese nations, a man will frequently prostitute his wife for gain. On the southern coast, and in Ceylon, eight men will live with one wife. This proves that institutions have no geographical distribution. Both kinds of polygamy are equally opposed to the natural increase of population.

Where nobler qualities distinguish the men of any race, we still find, as we ascend the scale of civilization, that women rise with them. In Afghanistan, in Celebes, and among the Bedouins of Arabia, the male sex is distinguished for its upright, dignified, and manly character. Chastity in women is prized, and because it is prized it is preserved. Where, on the contrary, the husband desires his wife may be faithful to him, not that she may be virtuous, but that he may not be robbed or wronged, it frequently occurs that she only keeps her vow until she has an opportunity to break it. On the whole, however, female chastity among the Hindus and Mohammedans is more general than from some popular accounts might be inferred. With the mixed races—hybrid in blood, manners, and religion—an inferior state of morality prevails.

With respect to actual prostitution, the region which is most free from it is the desert country of Arabia. It flourishes most, perhaps, in India and China. The flower boats of the Pearl River, the temples of the Deccan, the kiosks of Barbary, the Ghawazee villages of Egypt, the dancing houses of Java, and the tea-gardens of Japan, were all originally consecrated to vice, which nowhere flourishes more rankly than in those countries where despotism has paralyzed the virtuous energies of men.