The History of Prostitution: Its Extent, Causes, and Effects throughout the World

by William W. Sanger

Between the ages of fifteen and twenty years are found about three eighths of the whole number embraced in this return. Between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-five years nearly three eighths more of the whole number are included, giving in the first ten years of the table three quarters of the aggregate prostitution, while the next period of five years, or from twenty-six to thirty, contains one eighth more. It is thus upon record that seven out of every eight women who came under this investigation had not yet reached thirty years of age. Beyond this standard each year shows but a few, and of these veterans the majority are those who are now keeping houses of ill fame.

Comparing this with the ages of residents in New York as given in the Census Reports, it will appear that prostitutes under twenty years of age are in excess about twenty-five per cent.; as this inquiry shows that for every four abandoned women between the ages of twenty and thirty there are three between fifteen and twenty, but the official classification proves that for every four women in the state between twenty and thirty years old, there are only two between fifteen and twenty.

While juvenile degradation is an inseparable adjunct of prostitution, premature old age is its invariable result. Take, for example, the career of a female who enters a house of prostitution at sixteen years of age. Her step is elastic, her eye bright, she is the “observed of all observers.” The habitués of the place flock around her, gloat over her ruin while they praise her beauty, and try to drag her down to their own level of depravity while flattering her vanity. As the last spark of inherent virtue flickers and dies in her bosom, and she becomes sensible that she is indeed lost, that her anticipated happiness proves but splendid misery, she also becomes conscious that the door of reformation is practically closed against her. But this life of gay depravity can not last; her mind becomes tainted with the moral miasma in which she lives; her physical powers wane under the trials imposed upon them, and her career in a fashionable house of prostitution comes to an end; she must descend in the ladder of vice. Follow her from one step to another in her downward career. To-day you may find her in our aristocratic promenades; to-morrow she will be forced to walk in more secluded streets. To-night you may see her glittering at one of the fashionable theatres; to-morrow she will be found in some one of the infamous resorts which abound in the lower part of the city. To-day she may associate with the wealthy of the land; to-morrow none will be too low for her company. To-day she has servants to do her bidding; to-morrow she may be buried in a pauper’s coffin and a nameless grave. This is no fancy sketch, but an outline of the course of many women now living as prostitutes of the lowest class in the city of New York.

Any one conversant with the subject knows that there is a well understood gradation in this life, and as soon as a woman ceases to be attractive in the higher walks, as soon as her youth and beauty fade, she must either descend in the scale or starve. Nor will any deny that of those who commence a life of shame in their youth under the most specious and flattering delusions, the majority are found, in a short time, plunged into the deepest misery and degradation.

Here is seen, at a glance, a reason for the large number of juvenile prostitutes. Youth is a marketable commodity, and when its charms are lost, they must be replaced. The following cases, from life, will substantiate this view. For obvious reasons, the names are suppressed.

C. B. is a native of New York, and now resides in the Eighth Police District of the city. She is twenty years old, and became a prostitute at the age of sixteen, through the harshness and unkind treatment of a stepmother, her own mother having died when she was an infant. Take another case from the same neighborhood. L. B. was born in Vermont; her father died while she was a child. At the age of fifteen she was enticed to the city, and became an inmate of a house of prostitution. She is described as an intelligent, well-educated girl, of temperate habits. One more instance from the same locality. F. W. is a native of New York City; is the child of honest, hard-working parents; has received a medium education; at seventeen years old was seduced under a promise of marriage, and deserted. She then embraced a life of prostitution, influenced mainly by shame, and the idea that she had no other means of subsistence.

These women are residing in that part of the city which contains the majority of the first-class houses of prostitution; they have not yet descended in the scale. The ensuing selection, taken from the Fourth Police District, the antipodes of the former locality, will forcibly exhibit the operation of this gradual deterioration.

E. S. was seduced in Rochester, N. Y., at the age of sixteen. She accompanied her seducer to this city, and for a season lived here in luxury. She was finally deserted, and now drags out a wretched existence in Water Street. E. C., residing in the same neighborhood, is now nineteen years of age. She was married when but a child, and, five years since, or when she was only fourteen years old, was driven on the town through the brutal conduct of her husband. Passing through the various gradations of the scale, she has now become a confirmed drunkard; has endured much physical suffering; and, lost to all sense of shame, will doubtless continue in her wretched career till death puts an end to her misery.

To continue this chain of evidence, the following cases have been selected from the registers of the Penitentiary Hospital (now remodeled, and called the Island Hospital), Blackwell’s Island. S. A., of New Jersey, was admitted as a patient when only fifteen years of age, suffering from disease caused by leading a depraved life, and within six months was received and treated therein no less than four times. A. B., born in Scotland, was admitted and treated for venereal disease at fourteen years of age. L. A. D., born in England, was admitted at sixteen years of age, two years since, with similar disease, and, with only short intervals, has been an inmate of the hospital continuously from that time. M. H. was admitted at seventeen years of age, and endured a long and painful illness. M. J. D., after following a course of depravity for a year, was admitted at eighteen years of age, lingered in agony for twenty-five days, and then died, solely from the effects of a life of prostitution.

It is not necessary to pursue this subject farther, as sufficient facts have been adduced to support the assertion that youth is the grand desideratum in the inmates of houses of ill fame. Young women have been traced from the proudest resorts to the lowest haunts, and have been shown as suffering pain and sickness in a public institution, or dying there in torture. But no attempt has been made to calculate the misery produced in the respective families they had abandoned. The excruciating parental agony caused by the departure of a daughter from the paths of virtue seems more a matter for private contemplation by each reader than for any delineation here. We have witnessed the meetings of parents with their lost children; have stood beside the bed where a frail, suffering woman was yielding her last breath, and have shuddered at the awful mental agony overpowering her physical suffering. No doubt can exist that, were it possible to introduce the reader of these pages to such scenes, or even could they be adequately described in all their accumulated horrors, the cordial co-operation of all the friends of virtue and humanity would be secured in furtherance of any plan which would check this mighty torrent of vice and woe.