Some of the dancing saloons already mentioned have attained European celebrity. They stand in the same relation to common women as the exchange does to the mercantile community. Their female visitors are mostly prostitutes, a fact which deprives the scene of many fascinations existing in other cities. In the end of the last century there was no public place expressly designed for dancing, until, with the many equivocal blessings disseminated by the French Revolution, they also became an institution. The Hamburg saloons are conducted with order and quiet, and are generally closed about one o’clock in the morning. One of the most important, the Bacchus Hall, was burned down some few years since, and the authorities have, as yet, refused to grant a license for its re-erection.
As public places which in some degree facilitate prostitution, mention must be made of the common sleeping apartments locally called “deep cellars” (tiefen kellar). These are roomy vaults, many feet under ground, in which the poor find nightly shelter at very low prices. They are provided with beds and bedding. In the depth of poverty to which some of their customers have fallen, they can not afford to pay two schellings (about four cents) for the luxury of a bed, and these repose their weary limbs on some foul straw, or on the ground, at the charge of half a schelling. Some of these cellars are fifteen or twenty feet below the surface of the street, and it will not require a very vivid imagination to portray their horrors.
The beer and wine houses of Hamburg are tolerably free from prostitution; but a new class has lately sprung up, called “cellar-keeping” (kellerwirthschaff), and in these the guests are served by females in fancy costume, Swiss, Polish, or Circassian, as the case may be. Many of these contain private rooms for prostitution, and, although they are closely watched by the police, who sometimes ungallantly expel the fair foreigners and close the establishments, they still flourish, others being speedily opened elsewhere to fill up the gap.
From this general description of prostitutes, their habitations, and customs, we will proceed to a consideration of their condition as to health, and the extent and virulence of syphilis among them, still taking the pamphlet of Dr. Lippert for our guide.
It is generally imagined that the excessive action of the generative organs interferes with the power of procreation in common women. Dr. Lippert undertakes to controvert this opinion, with what success medical men whose professional experience has been among this class will be able to judge. He supports his views by general assertions rather than by specific facts, but refers, in corroboration, to well-known instances in which children have been born while the mothers were living in a state of open prostitution, as also to those cases where women who have abandoned the habit of promiscuous intercourse confine themselves to one man by marriage or cohabitation, and then become mothers. He attributes their sterility during prostitution to their wild and irregular life, their constant exposure to weather, etc., and argues that the powers of conception are suspended, but not destroyed thereby. He also introduces the fact that abortions are frequently produced in Hamburg by the common women themselves, or by some old crones who preside over their orgies, and are stated to have a long list of drugs applicable to this purpose, which they use in a reckless manner. The medical police are not unaware of these proceedings, but find them difficult to detect, as a woman will endeavor to avoid the stated examination by pleading excessive menstruation, or inventing some story she thinks likely to deceive, until all traces of the abortion are removed. The remarks of Dr. Lippert would lead to the belief that the excessive use of the female organs was more favorable to health than the disuse would be, a conclusion which most physicians will not be willing to admit. He adds, “Cancer of the womb occurred but once in my experience of eleven years at the General Infirmary, and cases of prolapsus uteri are very rare.”
A disease incident to common women, Colica scortorum (W——’s Colic), happens in Hamburg as elsewhere, but is attributed to exposure to the weather more than any other cause. It consists of pain in the womb, extending across the abdomen round to the loins, and sometimes including the whole region of the stomach. It is frequently accompanied with gastric derangement, sickness, or diarrhœa.
The enlargement of the clitoris, so much insisted on by some writers, Lippert altogether doubts, except as a very exceptional case; nor does he admit any effect of prostitution on the rectum unless induced by unnatural intercourse. As a general result of his observations, he concludes that, “apart from syphilitic affections, the generative organs of a prostitute do not usually differ from those of a virtuous woman.”
We find some returns of diseases not directly connected with prostitution; thus, cases of itch, which is now becoming rare, were in
| 1836 | 62 | |
| 1837 | 76 | |
| 1838 | 87 | |
| 1839 | 98 | |
| 1844 | 38 | |
| 1845 | 22 | |
| 1846 | 36 |
Of other general maladies, including fevers, inflammation of the lungs, liver, womb, etc., rheumatism, small-pox, piles, jaundice, gout, dropsy, and diarrhœa, the following are reported: