Daily Life in the Nineteenth Century455active. Adultery was a serious crime for married women
but less so for men. Flaubert probably would not have
been arrested had his novel been Doctor Bovary,describ-
ing the adultery of a prominent man. The respectable
double standard even taught that women did not have
sexual urges. As late as 1905 an Oxford physician could
seriously testify that nine out of ten women disliked
sex, and the tenth was invariably a harlot.
Given the double standard of sexual behavior, the
late age of marriages, and the desperate economic situa-
tion of women from the lower classes, it is not surpris-
ing that prostitution thrived during the nineteenth
century. Legal and open prostitution was a striking fea-
ture of European cities, and some authors have claimed
that, in periods of economic distress, prostitution be-
came the largest single form of women’s employment.
Women (frequently servants) who had been seduced
and left with a child had little legal support (they could
not even sue to prove paternity in most countries) and
usually no economic support. The situation was even
worse for rape victims who found many respectable
jobs closed to them. Even widows could be driven to
consider prostitution by their economic plight. Single
factory workers, trying to live on a fraction of a man’s
wages, faced few alternatives to supplementing their
wages through prostitution.
The London police estimated that six thousand
full-time prostitutes worked in the city in the 1860s and
twenty-five thousand in Britain; reformers claimed that
the true number was ten times higher (see document
23.4). The number of prostitutes was much higher if
one includes the thousands of working women driven
to supplement their wages by part-time prostitution.
The data behind such assertions are notoriously vari-
able. The number of women who registered with the
Parisian police as legal prostitutes increased from 1,293
in 1812 to 6,827 in 1914, and police records show that
10,000 to 30,000 Parisian women were arrested each
year for unregistered prostitution. The police estimated
34,000 prostitutes in Paris in the 1850s, 35,000 toDOCUMENT 23.4
A British Prostitute Describes Her Life (1849)
Henry Mayhew was a journalist in London, well known to his con-
temporaries as a comic writer; he was one of the founding editors of
Punch. Mayhew is better remembered by scholars today for his seri-
ous side, shown in a series of sensitive articles about the daily life of the
poor. These articles were collected in several volumes under the title
London Labour and London Poor(1851–62). The following
excerpt is one of Mayhew’s most moving. He originally published it in
The Morning Chroniclein 1849, under the title “Prostitution
among Needlewomen.”
She told her tale with her face hidden in her hands, and
sobbing so loud that it was difficult to catch her words ....
I used to work at “slop work”—at the shirt [hand-
sewing] trade—the fine full-fronted white shirts; I got
2 1/2 pence each for them [approximately 5¢].... By
working from five o’clock in the morning to midnight each
night I might be able to do seven in the week. That would
bring me in 17 1/2 pence for my whole week’s labor. Out
of this the cotton must be taken, and that came to 2 pence
every week, and so left me 15 1/2 pence to pay rent and
living and buy candles with. I was single and received
some little help from my friends; still it was impossible for
me to live. I was forced to go out of a night to make my
living. I had a child and it used to cry for food. So, as I
could not get a living for him and myself by my needs, I
went into the streets and made a living that way....
My father was an independent preacher, and I pledge
my word that it was the low price paid for my labor that
drove me to prostitution. I often struggled against it, and
many times I have taken my child into the streets to beg
rather than I would bring shame on myself and it any
longer. I have made pin cushions and fancy articles—such
as I could manage to scrape together—and taken them
into the streets to sell, so that I might get an honest living,
but I couldn’t. Sometime I should be out all night in the
rain, and sell nothing at all, me and my child together....
I was so poor I couldn’t have even a night’s lodging on
credit. One night in the depth of winter his legs froze to
his side....
[A]t last I left the ‘house’ [workhouse] to work at um-
brella covering.... I then made from 3 shillings to 4
shillings a week [36–48 pence, 75¢–$1], and from that
time I gave up prostitution.... Had I remained at shirt
making, I must have been a prostitute to this day.