Parent-Duchatelet’s book, no less admirable in its execution than in its design, still remains the foundation for the scientific study of prostitution. It is the exemplar for all contemporary and subsequent works.
The powerful influence exercised by this book was shown above all in this—that works on prostitution appeared in rapid succession in the various capitals of the civilized world. These were all based to a greater or less extent upon the work of Parent-Duchatelet, and thus they constitute extremely valuable scientific monographs regarding the conditions of prostitution in particular towns, such as since that date have not been issued. Here there still lies hidden a wealth of material, a large part of which has not yet been utilized.
As an enlargement and continuation of the work of Parent-Duchatelet, there appeared three years later, in the year 1839, the work of the Commissary of Police Béraud[252] on the prostitutes of Paris and on the Parisian police des mœurs. The book is more especially distinguished by an elaborate history of prostitution, and by the wealth of psychological observations it contains; also by its exact information regarding secret prostitution.
In the same year a well-known London physician, Dr. Michael Ryan,[253] published his important book on Prostitution in London,[254] with a comparison of the conditions in Paris and New York. Ryan first dealt with the general social and economic causes of prostitution, with critical acumen, as we could not but expect from an Englishman. His book also contained an interesting account of the extraordinary diffusion in England at that time of pornographic books and pictures,[255] and concerning their publication and sale by pedlars, and the measures undertaken to repress this traffic. Valuable also are the detailed reports given in this book, on pp. 212-252, regarding prostitution in the United States, and especially in New York.
The example of Ryan was followed by his countrymen, Dr. William Tait and the Rev. Ralph Wardlaw. The former treated in a comprehensive work the subject of prostitution in Edinburgh;[256] the latter, in a shorter book, described prostitution in Glasgow.[257]
Very interesting is the book, of which a few copies only ever reached Germany (one of which is in my own possession), and which even in Portugal is extremely rare, of Dr. Francisco Ignacio dos Santos Cruz regarding prostitution in Lisbon,[258] in which the whole subject of Portuguese prostitution is admirably described, with special reference to the capital city. Santos Cruz gives most careful attention to the legislative aspect of the question. He was the first to advocate a measure which has recently been proposed also by Lesser (doubtless in ignorance of the work of his predecessor)—viz., the formation of polyclinics for the gratuitous treatment of prostitutes.[259]
Regarding prostitution in the town of Lyons, renowned for its immorality, Dr. Potton wrote a celebrated book, which received a prize from the Medical Society of Lyons in the year 1841. This work was based on official sources, and had especial reference to the relationships of prostitution to the hygienic and economic conditions of the population.[260]
A valuable book, also, is the work on prostitution in Algiers by E. A. Duchesne.[261] It contains an elaborate account of “male prostitution”—that is, prostitution of men for men—an expansion of the idea of prostitution which is, as far as my knowledge goes, found here for the first time. Naturally, in earlier works we find allusions to men who practise pederasty for money, but the idea “prostitution” had hitherto been strictly limited to the class of purchasable women.
We see this, for example, in the anonymous book “Prostitution in Berlin, and its Victims,”[262] published in Berlin seven years before the appearance of the work of Duchesne. The author definitely states that “the admirable book of Parent-Duchatelet on prostitution in the town of Paris, and its remarkable success, have chiefly given occasion to the publication of my own work.” The book is, however, quite independent in character, and treats of the individual relationships of prostitution in Berlin, on the basis of official sources and experience, in historical, moral, medical, and political relations, and also from the point of view of police administration. It contains an appendix on “prostituted men” (p. 207), who, however, are not homosexual prostitutes, but, according to the writer’s own definition, “men who make it their profession to serve for payment voluptuous women by the gratification of the latter’s unnatural passions.” This species still exists at the present day, but there is no particular name for the type. (In the seventies, in Vienna, men who could be hired to perform coitus were known locally as “stallions”—Ger. Hengste.) We must include them in the great army of souteneurs, although the term is not strictly applicable. Later we shall return to the consideration of this peculiar variety of male prostitution.
As an enlargement of the work just mentioned, we can regard the book published in the same year, 1846, by the Criminal Commissary, Dr. Carl Röhrmann, on Prostitution in Berlin.[263]