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

by William W. Sanger

Sections 2, 3, and 4 require the keeper of any house of prostitution to give notice to the commissary of the quarter when any of his women leave him, or when he receives a new one, and restrain him from keeping more women than are specified in his contract.

Sections 5 to 9 provide that a surgeon shall visit every woman once a fortnight, “for the purpose of protecting the health of revelers (schwarmer), as well as that of the women themselves;” that every woman shall pay him two groschen for each visit; and that, upon observing the slightest signs of disease, the surgeon shall require the housekeeper to detain the woman in her room. If the keeper neglect this order, he is made responsible for the entire costs of the illness which any visitor could prove was contracted from one of his women. If the surgeon finds the woman already so far infected that she can not be cured by cleanliness and retirement alone, he is authorized to order her removal to the Charité, “where she will be taken care of in the pavilion free of charge.”

Sections 10 and 11 provide that the debts of a woman must be paid before she can remove from one house of prostitution to another, or before she can leave one house to commence another on her own account.

Section 12 enjoins that any woman who desires to quit her mode of life altogether shall be entirely discharged from any debts to the housekeeper.

The last section requires every housekeeper who has music to pay six groschen a year for the permit to his musicians, the money to be applied to the benefit of the poor-house.

The “toleration but not authorization” clause is the noticeable feature in these regulations, and indicates the policy which was then generally adopted throughout the kingdom.

In reference to the period succeeding the issue of these rules, which continued in force till 1792, we find some information in the pages of Fiducin. Thus, in 1717, an inquiry proved that the inmates of brothels, and also the secret prostitutes, were mostly the children of soldiers, who “had been brought to vice as a trade, either from the want of a proper bringing up or of a skillful handicraft.”... All measures for the extermination of the evil having been found ineffectual, “they were obliged to adopt the system of a larger toleration of common brothels, to be strictly watched over by the police, as a necessary outlet for the tendency to immorality.” The number of houses of ill fame increased in proportion to the population, the influx of strangers, and the additions to the garrison made under Frederick II.; and still more so after the close of the seven years’ war. In the year 1780, there were one hundred such houses in Berlin, each containing eight or nine women. They were divided into three classes; the lowest were those in which the women dressed in plain clothes, and were frequented mostly by Hamburg or Amsterdam mariners; the second class of women paraded themselves with painted faces, haunted the more retired corners of the town, had little attractive about their persons or dress, and were principally visited by mechanics and laborers; the third, and apparently the most select of the kind, was a description of coffee-house, frequented by females, who were designated “Mamselles:” these did not live in the houses, but used them merely as a convenient rendezvous.

In 1792 a new code of regulations appeared, the bulk of which continued in force in Berlin and other towns for many years. The rules of 1700 were too vague, made no provision for a variety of cases likely to arise, and were silent as to the question of private prostitution. Many inconveniences had arisen from these omissions, and, in consequence, a memorial was addressed to the government by the police director, Von Eisenhardt, containing suggestions for amendments to the law.

The preamble of the royal reply to this application acknowledges the attention of the police to the matter with much satisfaction; admits prostitution (hurenanstalten) to be “a necessary evil in a great city where many men are not in a position to marry, although of an age when the sexual instincts are at the highest, in order thereby to avoid greater disorders which are not to be restrained by any law or authority, and which take their rise from an inextinguishable natural impulse;” but expressly reiterates that it is “only to be tolerated (zu dulden);” and that it can not, “without impropriety and consequences injurious to morality, be established by the public laws, which do not contain any sanction whatever to common prostitution.”

The sections following this preamble provide that any one who seduces a woman, or induces her to carry on a venal traffic with her person, shall be liable to one year’s imprisonment in the House of Correction, and on repetition of the offense, besides doubling the punishment, shall be whipped and driven from the country; declare any man or woman who communicates the venereal disease liable for the expenses of the cure and incidental damages (sonstigen interesse), together with imprisonment for three months, commutable by paying a fine of one hundred dollars; prohibit taking young women from the country into houses of prostitution by any device against their will, and authorize the punishment of any man who willfully infects a common woman.