In common with other nations, we have passed laws intended to crush out prostitution; have made vigorous protests (on paper) against its existence; and there our labors have ended. The experience acquired in this course of legislation only demonstrates that such laws can not be enforced so as to produce the desired effect. But why are they still retained on the statute books? Is it not an opprobrium upon our national character to allow them to exist, if they are never to be enforced? If they are powerless for good, effective only to increase the plague they were designed to check, why not expunge them at once, and substitute others more practicable and more useful in their stead? A candid acknowledgment of error, whether by an individual or a community, is always a creditable and graceful act. It shows that experience has dictated a wiser course; that reflection and experiment have condemned the former plan.
It is not to be supposed that any system of laws will entirely eradicate prostitution; history, social arrangements, and physiology alike forbid any such utopian idea. But will not a more enlightened policy do much toward diminishing it? Many of the present generation can recollect the time when it was considered right and proper to imprison an insolvent debtor; but this idea is now wisely repudiated by society, and no one will assert that the effect of the change has been to place any additional difficulties in the way of collecting legal claims. Capital punishment has been abolished in many cases, and yet it is a well-known fact that crime has diminished where this experiment has been tried. This is more particularly the case in England, where forgery, which was punished with death, is comparatively rare since the amelioration of the law. A general conviction is becoming prevalent that the most effectual way to deal with criminals is to attempt to raise them above what they were, in contradistinction to the old plan of sinking them lower.[426] It is now freely acknowledged that the elevating, instead of the depressing process, is consonant both with the spirit of our republican institutions and with humanizing policy. Even if American society is not yet prepared to take a course directly the reverse of its present prohibitory practice, prudence dictates the adoption of some medium rule by which prostitution can be kept in check without being encouraged or allowed, as in the Prussian laws, which expressly declare that the vice is “tolerated but not permitted.”
Government should be patriarchal in its character, and exercise an effective but parental supervision over all its subjects. This is the living principle which gives vitality and strength to any organization, and no satisfactory government can exist if it is absent. Now, in regard to prostitutes, admitting that they have erred, still, the people, who constitute the government in this country, are concerned in the matter, and their mutual obligations, their policy, and their pecuniary interests require that these wandering members of the body corporate should have a reasonable opportunity for reformation. Which will give this opportunity most effectually—to crush them under the weight of their own misdeeds, or to adopt a liberal course likely to induce them to abandon their depraved habits? One of the secrets which bound the soldiers of the empire to the standard of Napoleon through all his battles and vicissitudes was the knowledge that France regarded them as her children, and would not fail to protect and support them. The words “I am a Roman citizen” derived their magic power from the fact that the Roman Empire treated all her citizens as sons, and watched over their interests with parental care. The recent outburst of popular enthusiasm in our own country when the commander[427] of an American national vessel rescued a citizen from threatened outrage in a foreign land, was an emphatic recognition of the principle. Can we now consistently refuse to apply the rule to all who need our kindly care?[428]
It may be considered a bold assertion, that our present mode of dealing with prostitution is calculated to widely extend its prevalence, yet the historical facts already given are sufficient to prove its truth without further argument. The existing rule of treatment, instead of suppressing the vice, merely drives it into seclusion—a result far different from the design, and infinitely increasing its power. To those secret haunts of prostitution resort the lowest and most depraved of the male sex, with the full knowledge that a fundamental law of our commonwealth considers every house a castle, into which no officer can enter unless armed with a special legal authority, or called in to suppress an outrage. The result of such seclusion is to confirm the vicious habits of the prostitutes, and frequently to lead them to the commission of other and more heinous offenses.
Again: Secrecy further augments prostitution by preventing the approach of those benevolent individuals who would feel a pleasure in advising and directing the daughters of misery for their real good. Philanthropists have organized Prison Associations and Magdalen Asylums to bear upon prostitution, but they can only reach it in its lowest grades, when the females become inmates of public institutions from destitution and disease. Reformers can not come near the fountain-head, and they are consequently now as far from the consummation of their praiseworthy intentions as when they commenced their labors; because prohibitory measures force prostitutes to take shelter in seclusion, and it is only when women are consigned to our hospitals, work-houses, and penitentiaries that they become accessible. By this time they are so far sunk in depravity as to afford very slender hope of reformation. This is more especially true of Magdalen Asylums. There is indeed a “field white unto the harvest” for benevolent exertions in the most secluded haunts of prostitution, if they could only be made accessible. Sympathy is worthily bestowed upon the sick or dying women transferred from public institutions to charitable organizations. To alleviate the sorrows of their final sufferings, to soothe the agony of the hour of death, to divest of its terrors the passage from this world to the dread future, is a work in which the heart of any Christian must rejoice. But it is only a part of the duties contemplated by such asylums. While their projectors gladly administer the consolations of our holy religion to an expiring Magdalen, they also seek an opportunity to direct erring women to the paths of virtue during the life that still remains to them; to guide them to a path in which they can retrace the false steps already taken, and become useful members of society. This opportunity for exertion is denied under the system which drives vice into seclusion.
Turning now from considering the operation of repressive laws, we notice the importance of sanitary and quarantine regulations. One of the first cares of a good government is to preserve and promote the public health. An illustration of this position occurred in the summer of 1856, when fears were entertained that the city would be visited by a frightful epidemic fever. The public voice declared through the newspapers that the most rigorous and careful sanitary measures were needed, and the cleaning of streets, the removal of nuisances, the purification of tenant-houses, and many other measures of the same kind, were loudly called for, and adopted as far as possible, while the quarantine regulations of the harbor were strictly enforced. In view of this danger, so dreadful and apparently so imminent, the united voice of public opinion sanctioned the very course advocated here; namely, the adoption of remedial, or, more properly speaking, preventive measures. Venereal poison is as destructive, although not so suddenly fatal, as yellow fever, and every motive of philanthropy and economy urges the necessity of effective means for its counteraction.
Since remedial or preventive measures have been adopted in Paris the number of cases of disease and the virulence of its form have materially abated. This fact is asserted not merely on our own personal knowledge, but also from the corroborative testimony of physicians who have had recent opportunities of investigating the subject in that capital. The diminution can be easily explained by a comparison of the laws and regulations applicable to prostitution. We in New York, by our stringent prohibition, drive the vice into seclusion, and deprive ourselves of the means of watching either its progress or results; while our French contemporaries insist that it shall be at all times open to the surveillance of properly appointed persons.
The extent of syphilitic infection in New York has been portrayed in the preceding chapter, but the danger of contamination must not be viewed as a merely local question. From its commercial importance, its mercantile marine, its centralization of rail-roads and canals, and its facilities for river navigation, this city is now the great point of arrival and departure of travelers and emigrants from and to all parts of the Union. Foreigners reach here in large numbers every day, intending to travel to other states. If they remain in the city a few days only, they are exposed to its temptations, and may contract disease which, by their agency, will be perpetuated in the district they have selected as their future home. Returned adventurers from the Pacific shores come here to find the readiest transit to their several destinations. They are exposed to the same temptations, with a probability of the same result. Merchants and store-keepers visit this commercial emporium to obtain supplies of goods, and they are exposed to the same fascinations and the same contingencies. The sailors in port are similarly liable. In short, it is scarcely possible to imagine the extent over which the syphilitic poison originating in the proud and wealthy city of New York may be spread, nor would it be an error to describe the Empire City as a hot-bed where, from the nature of its laws on prostitution, syphilis may be cultivated and disseminated.
Possessed, then, of indubitable proofs of the existence of syphilis, and the knowledge that its range is more widely extended every day, gathering additional malignity in its progress, the next point is to inquire what measures have been adopted to check its ravages. These have hitherto been found totally inadequate, because based upon an erroneous theory, namely, the idea of suppression. The principal public or free hospital where the venereal disease is confessedly treated is the Penitentiary Hospital on Blackwell’s Island, now known as the Island Hospital. To obtain the benefit of medical treatment therein, it is necessary that the patient should have been sentenced from the Court of Sessions to the Penitentiary for the commission of some crime; or committed to the Work-house by a police justice for vagrancy, drunkenness, or disorderly conduct. From this fact it will be seen that there is, strictly speaking, no “free” hospital for such diseases, as the only one intended for their treatment will or can receive none but those sentenced for an infraction of the laws.
Still the necessity for professional assistance compels many, both males and females, to submit to the degradation of a police commitment. Unfortunate women, or laboring men, find that they are suffering from infection. Possibly they have no money, or probably they have exhausted their funds in payments to charlatans, and so resort for aid and advice to some one of the public dispensaries. Unless the case is a slight one, the medical officers there advise them to resort to hospital treatment, to procure which the poor sufferers are furnished with a certificate of their state, and directed to apply to a police justice. They follow this advice, and in nine cases out of ten the magistrate’s only remark is, “Do you want me to send you to the Hospital?” The answer, of course, is in the affirmative, and he forthwith signs a printed commitment to the Penitentiary or Work-house for a time named therein, and ranging from one to six months at the discretion of the magistrate. The following is a copy of one of these documents: