One is astonished—exclaim MM. Schneevooght (first physician at the hospital of Amsterdam), Van Frigt (assistant surgeon to the same hospital and the syphilitic dispensary), Van Oordt (student in the Parisian hospitals)—one is astonished that in a country where legislation adapts itself to the exigencies of modern times, among a people signalized by a practical genius, an enlightened administration has only very lately adopted the only measures to check the scourge of prostitution.
In Holland religious scruples have yielded before considerations of a higher nature. The Government of the Netherlands has at last decided to leave to the Communes the power of preventing by regulation the sad consequences of free and unrestrained prostitution. Supervision, independantly of the services which it renders to the public health, assists to prevent the extension of the evil of which we write.
It is easy to suppose that the capital of Holland offers peculiar facilities for the growth of this vice, which always flourishes in commercial and maritime cities, and more especially when the two are combined.
| In 1851 | 1852 | 1855 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| The municipal population was | 221,111 | 240,669 | 250,304 |
| Floating | 3,532 | 5,687 | 7,357 |
| Military | 881 | 1,030 | 793 |
The number of strangers that come here, the mariners that commerce attracts, the luxury that reigns among the upper classes, the number of young men of good family, who are condemned to a life of celibacy by inadequate means, unite to relax the morals of the Dutch.
Even now the municipal authorities recoil before the difficulties thrown in their way by the independent spirit of the people, who do not like restrictions imposed by authority, however salutary they may be.
A curious book which appeared in 1648 relates an edict published in 1506, by virtue of which only agents of the municipal police were allowed to open and keep disorderly houses and in certain designated quarters.
In 1789 a commission of health was convoked, and strict precautions taken to guard against infection. It followed from this that 177 women were doctored in one year, a number nearly double that of the year before.
The author of a book about medicine, which appeared in Amsterdam in 1820, complained bitterly of the depravity of manners which led to the decrease of marriages, and of the great number of prostitutes who day and night frequented the streets and other public places to attract passengers by indecent gestures and immodest proposals: more than 800 were known to the police, of which about 200 lived in tolerated houses.
Coming back to modern times, during the year 1850 we find there were in Amsterdam 764 illegitimate births, among 21,365 unmarried inhabitants, between 16 and 30 years, of the male sex, and among 25,207 of the female sex. At the same time there were twenty disorderly houses and 400 prostitutes not inscribed, but simply known to the police.