We can not close this branch of our subject better than by once again quoting from the Spectator, and giving a genuine letter, which, although written a century and a half ago, is just such a one as might, for a similar purpose, be penned at the present day. It as accurately describes the mode in which “articles of trade” in the procuress line are disposed of now as then.
“My Lord,—I having a great esteem for your honor, and a better opinion of you than of any of the quality, makes me acquaint you of an affair that I hope will oblige you to know. I have a niece that came to town about a fortnight ago. Her parents being lately dead, she came to me, expecting to have found me in so good a condition as to set her up in a milliner’s shop. Her father gave fourscore pounds with her for five years. Her time is out, and she is not sixteen: as pretty a gentlewoman as ever you saw; a little woman, which I know your lordship likes; well-shaped, and as fair a complexion for red and white as ever I saw. I doubt not but your lordship will be of the same opinion. She designs to go down about a month hence except I can provide for her, which I can not at present. Her father was one with whom all he had died with him, so there is four children left destitute; so, if your lordship thinks fit to make an appointment, where I shall wait on you with my niece, by a line or two, I stay for your answer, for I have no place fitted up, since I left my house, fit to entertain your honor. I told her she should go with me to see a gentleman, a very good friend of mine; so I desire you to take no notice of my letter by reason she is ignorant of the ways of the town. My lord, I desire, if you meet us, to come alone, for, upon my word and honor, you are the first that I ever mentioned her to.”
Next to procuresses in this gradation of iniquity are the brothel-keepers, who, although often procuresses, are not necessarily so. Shakspeare, who included all human existence in the sphere of his observation, says of them,
“A bawd! a wicked bawd!
The evil that thou causest to be done,
That is thy means to live: do thou but think
What ’tis to cram a maw or clothe a back
From such a filthy vice; say to thyself,
From their abominable and beastly touches
I drink, I eat, array myself, and live.
Canst thou believe thy living is a life?
So stinkingly depending.”
Many of these persons have been prostitutes themselves, and when past service in the one branch of business have naturally fallen into the other. Others, without having been such, adopt the trade from inclination or circumstances. The condition of these people and the interior of their houses are as various as the people themselves. At the west end of London there is a considerable degree of style; in the lower parts of the town they are sordid and filthy habitations, fit only for deeds of darkness. They are confined to private streets, alleys, and lanes out of the great thoroughfares. The law is usually put in operation in England against the brothel-keepers as the representatives of the whole class. As they get the chief profits of the trade, so they run all the legal risks. The indictments against them, however, are comparatively few. There is no public prosecutor in England, as with us. The police administration of the metropolis, perhaps the best organized, the most efficient and cheapest department of the public service, does not include the prevention of brothels within its duties, which are confined to the preservation of life and property. The prosecution of brothel-keepers and abolition of their establishments are usually undertaken by the parish authorities when the places are so conducted as to become a nuisance to the neighborhood; and police officers merely interfere to prevent the assemblage of prostitutes in the public streets, or the solicitation of passengers by them. Virtually this provision is little better than a dead letter, and the women evade it by walking when an officer is in sight, and thus deprive him of the only proof which would enable him to make an arrest.[301]
Some of the girls who pay exorbitant board also stipulate to give their mistresses one half of their cash receipts, which are frequently very large in the case of attractive women, amounting sometimes to one or two hundred dollars a week. The mistress is treasurer, and the prostitutes rarely succeed in receiving back what ostensibly belongs to them. The very prosecution before mentioned originated in a French girl’s being cheated by the brothel-keeper. The clothing is furnished by the mistress, and for this she charges prices which absorb the entire earnings of the girls. She even contrives to furnish them with such a number of showy and useless garments that she keeps them always in her debt, and so has a lien on each to prevent her leaving as long as she is a profitable member of the establishment. Some girls who have been seduced have, when entering on a life of prostitution, extensive and valuable wardrobes. The mistress runs them into debts of her own contracting, and if they become dissatisfied with their treatment and desire to leave, they are held for the debt. By the common law of England, all debts incurred for an immoral purpose are void, but this law is of little value to those who are ignorant of its existence; besides which, the brothel-keepers have possession of the booty, and thus effectually drive the debtor to an adjustment of the matters in dispute.
Such of the brothel-keepers as have no lawful husbands form intimacies with some man whom they support. In slang dialect, there is a class of men called “spooneys,” who support the women, or furnish them with funds when necessary. They set them up in business, become responsible for their debts, and assist them in all their difficulties. The “fancy men” are those who do nothing for them, but live at their expense. The lower class of brothel-keepers have no “spooneys,” but they invariably have “fancy men,” who act as bullies, and settle by physical force any disputes that may arise between the inmates and their visitors. These men spend the day in taverns, and the night in the particular brothels to which they are attached, and are frequently felons of the deepest dye.
Some of the brothel-keepers are married women, and even mothers of families. The husbands are lazy, worthless wretches, addicted to gambling and drinking, and brutally indifferent to the sources from which their luxuries are supplied. In some cases the wealthier individuals have been known to send their children to good schools away from home, and to have kept them in ignorance of their own wretched vocation. Thus sin entails its own punishment.
The number of brothels in London has been variously estimated. The whole number of houses at the last census was three hundred thousand and upward. Among them it was calculated, and probably correctly, that there were five thousand brothels, including houses of assignation. The rents of these establishments vary as much as the houses and situations (from fifteen hundred down to one hundred dollars a year). In good neighborhoods we should be slow to believe that landlords had any previous knowledge of the purposes to which their houses are to be applied. Independent of moral objection, such a house deteriorates the character of the property. Indeed, the clauses in leases of the great London properties are very strict, and include all objectionable trades as causes of forfeiture.
The owners of the houses are of all classes. The Almonry of Westminster, once the abode of Caxton, which within these six or eight years has been pulled down, was one of the vilest aggregations of vice and crime in existence. This was the property of the dean and chapter of Westminster Abbey. The common law of England, as already mentioned in the matter of dress, prohibits the recovery of the rents of houses let for immoral purposes. Many of the brothel-keepers themselves hire houses, furnish them, and sublet them. It has been made a matter of reproach that landlords should, even indirectly, derive income from such sources. But poverty and vice are closely allied; where poverty exists, vice will come. It is impossible for a landlord to exclude any class of tenants in a particular neighborhood suited to them, and those who know aught about the improvement and ventilation of large cities, and the breaking up of bad neighborhoods, are well aware that they are accompanied with a fearful amount of extra misery to the very poor.