The celebrated M. Boucher places the number of prostitutes before the Revolution at 30,000. These figures are, however, supposed to include gay women of every kind—actresses, shop-girls, manufacturing women, and public women, openly known as such.
It is easy to see that there is a great uncertainty in this calculation of the number of prostitutes before the Revolution, but in the year 1802, Fouché, then Minister of Police, having an idea of erecting dispensaries in every city in France, estimated, in speaking of Paris, that it actually did contain 30,000 public women.
Eight years later, in 1810, the Police Minister demanded from his subordinate officer an approximate estimate of the number of prostitutes in the city; and the return furnished to him places the number at 18,000, of whom one-half were kept-women. In 1825 the author of the “Biographie des Commissaires de Police” was of opinion that the actual number did not exceed 15,000.
It was not until after the administration of Baron Pasquier, and especially since 1816, that any reliable documents were prepared. The researches were executed with great care, and every woman who practised with sufficient publicity was placed on the returns.
According to M. Duchatelet, the total number of prostitutes inscribed on the register in
| 1812 was | 15,523 |
| 1813 | 20,113 |
| 1814 | 22,866 |
| 1815 | 22,249 |
| 1816 | 26,226 |
| 1817 | 28,953 |
| 1818 | 31,042 |
| 1819 | 31,280 |
| 1820 | 32,957 |
| 1821 | 34,966 |
| 1822 | 34,831 |
| 1823 | 32,510 |
| 1824 | 31,845 |
| 1825 | 31,483 |
| 1826 | 29,948 |
| 1827 | 29,663 |
| 1828 | 31,956 |
| 1829 | 34,118 |
| 1830 | 36,337 |
| 1831 | 39,128 |
| 1832 | 42,699 |
(This is amalgamating the monthly inscriptions during the entire year.)
This calculation extends over 21 years, and the author declares the numbers to be reliable. It is extremely interesting to the statistician to notice the fluctuations of vice during different periods of a country’s history. In 1815 it will be perceived that the number sensibly diminishes, but it increases gradually and regularly from 1816 to 1822, a time at which the inscriptions are augmented by more than 2900. In 1827 they are again lowered, only to be considerably increased in 1830. These oscillations must arrest attention, but it is incontestable that prostitution has advanced with rapid and irresistible strides during each successive year that has succeeded, and to prove such to be the fact we accept from the same authority a table indicating the number of women inscribed on the registers within the following 22 years, which will bring us up to 1854, when there is a monthly average of 4200.
The total number of women inscribed on the register in
| 1833 was | 44,676 |
| 1834 | 45,382 |
| 1835 | 45,759 |
| 1836 | 45,811 |
| 1837 | 46,584 |
| 1838 | 47,881 |
| 1839 | 47,630 |
| 1840 | 47,153 |
| 1841 | 46,635 |
| 1842 | 46,089 |
| 1843 | 45,846 |
| 1844 | 46,340 |
| 1845 | 47,559 |
| 1846 | 49,915 |
| 1847 | 51,422 |
| 1848 | 51,298 |
| 1849 | 50,015 |
| 1850 | 52,291 |
| 1851 | 52,918 |
| 1852 | 51,620 |
| 1853 | 50,614 |
| 1854 | 50,790 |