Overview and Sources

Paris, France changed dramatically between the seventeenth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. As the population of Paris increased from nearly 250,000 residents in 1600 to a current population of approximately 2.2 million in the city centre, ¹ the city was redefined by its revolutions, subsequent industrialization and immigration, and wars. During those centuries, prostitution was redefined as well. Originally prostitution was a moral offense and an issue of public order. Individual prostitutes, who were defined collectively under the law, were typically poor, young women from the provinces. ² They were dealt with in three ways: the judicial system if they committed other more serious infractions, prison hospitals if they were diseased, or the police in an effort to enforce order.

In the seventeenth century, the system of dealing with prostitution in Paris changed from sporadic toleration briefly to confinement. In the eighteenth century, toleration and social control characterized governmental practices. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, houses of prostitution or brothels (lupanars, maisons closes, maisons de tolérance, and bordels) were licensed, and the “French System” was inaugurated. As a regulationist system, it also allowed for toleration because prostitution remained untouched by governmental legislation. Functionally, the “French System” protected those prostitutes whom it enclosed while expanding police surveillance. Toleration continued to be a hallmark of the first half of the twentieth century, in spite of abolitionist assaults on the system. Even when the regulated houses of prostitution were closed after World War ii, prostitution per se was unaffected. This position was consistent with how the French have historically defined prostitution in classical terms, i.e., prostitution as a “sewer in the palace” or an unavoidable necessity.

In 1960, the French adopted the un “Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others” (1949), which officially placed France among abolitionist countries. ³ Yet, the French also clarified their position; they would continue to respect the liberty of an individual to be a prostitute. There was little debate until the 1990s, so the police continued their surveillance and monitoring of prostitutes. Toleration, for all intents and purposes, continued. Only very recently has a new, systematic re-evaluation of prostitution taken place. Fundamentally this is because Paris has changed dramatically. There are far more defined types of sex work than even a half century ago, and morality is not an unimportant element in the debates. In Paris today, prostitution is not viewed as a singular type of female soliciting. There are multiple prostitutions, each with its own character, and they are viewed differently by those in authority. In fact, the most recent French national legislation (the Sarkozy Law) placed sex workers, the majority of whom are immigrants, under the legal umbrella of a “danger to domestic security”. ⁴ As of 2013, with a change in the government, the debate on prostitution was renewed, and on 4 December, the National Assembly (the lower house of the French Parliament) overwhelmingly passed a law to criminalize clients while reversing the Sarkozy Law and decriminalizing the outward manifestations of prostitution. When the French Senate received the bill for review and action, it was far less enthusiastic and referred the legislation to a Select Committee which rejected the stringent fines on customers, saying that prostitution would be driven underground, tying it more directly to human trafficking and endangering prostitutes further. ⁵ Since then, the government has taken new action, rejecting the criminalization of clients and reinstating the crime of passive solicitation against prostitutes. One opponent of the 2015 Senate measure remarked, “Prostitutes are always the offenders; the client is always king.” ⁶

In this urban overview of prostitution in Paris, I have employed a number of studies defining prostitution, outlining its context, and delineating prostitutes’ social profiles. I have also attempted to provide evidence about governmental and church responses to the work done by prostitutes in Paris, along with the challenging issues of migration, industrialization, late marriage, the impacts of war, and ultimately the market for sex. There are clear changes in policy during this four-century period, particularly the explicit gender and class differentiations that were firmly established in the nineteenth century. ⁷ I will also address the agency of prostitutes themselves as they have, over time, exhibited different responses to their employment and their condition.

In France, commercial sexuality has most often been viewed in terms of its relationship with the authorities. Therefore, it is important to note that the legal, juridical, and administrative approaches to prostitution often obscure the ways prostitutes operated. Prostitutes had their own networks, whether they were members of a family in pre-industrial France, supporting the family, or separated from it. Later, in post-revolutionary France, industrialization alone did not set the context for prostitution; nor were prostitutes always voiceless as moral crusaders have typically characterized them. Their relationship to the French state and to bourgeois society was much more complex. Finally, it is true that police, court, and prison dossiers reflect the words of the bureaucrats who recorded them; but they also contain the words of their subjects, and those truths and fictions can be ferreted out. ⁸

I have based this study of prostitution in Paris on the following types of sources: royal decrees, administrative and police circulars, and national laws; case studies (also collected as aggregate data) based on the records of tribunals such as the Châtelet and transcripts of the Correctional Police; prison ledgers such as those of the Salpêtrière and Saint Martin, as well as records of police clerks of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; scientific and medical treatises and studies on venereal diseases; the work of moral crusaders and crusaders for individual liberty; and the words of sex labourers themselves, as they have been collected. ⁹

Finally, it should be noted that Paris is an interesting case study because of its historic paradox. During the Revolution of 1789, individual liberty was enshrined in the French pantheon of virtues (although large segments of the population, including women, were excluded at that time) while, at the same time and since then, there has been a continuing history of governmental regulation through which the public is deemed to need protection from disorder and particularly from disease. Three questions should be kept in mind in this regard. First, where does individual liberty end, including the right to use one’s body as a means of labour? Second, where does governmental intervention for the protection of others begin? Third, during these four centuries, how and why did prostitutes navigate the spaces they inhabited or in which they found themselves?

Defining Prostitution in Paris

The next paragraphs provide definitions of the terms associated with the practice of prostitution in Paris and its regulation, focusing in particular on four words: prostitution, soliciting, pimping, and procuring. “Prostitution” has typically meant the provision of sexual services, later defined as the exchange of sexual services for payment. While it has generally been seen as a female profession, prostitution has not historically been gendered; and in Paris in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, prostitution has taken many forms among female, male, and transgendered practitioners.

“Soliciting”, the second term identified with prostitution, is the act of attracting clients. While simple on face value, soliciting is strikingly complex because of its variations. Overt solicitation or le racolage actif has always been under legal sanction, whether in the army encampments of Louis xiv, under the arcades of the Palais Royal, or along the rue Saint-Denis. Penalties for overt solicitation were most often meted out by the police, and they varied dramatically. Passive solicitation or le racolage passif is something quite different because it assumes that the prostitute makes no strikingly outward overtures to the potential client. Yet, a slight glance, an uncategorized attitude, an inadvertent approach, or perceived provocative poses can all be deemed passive solicitation by authorities. Codified most recently under the Sarkozy Law, such actions were subject to police intervention. ¹⁰ Historically, passive solicitation was considered a corollary of prostitution so long as it was not scandalous; but as of 2003, it was classed as criminal. Such remains the case today.

“Pimping”, the third term associated with prostitution, is carried out by a pimp who serves as an agent for a prostitute, receiving a portion of the prostitute’s earnings. In return, the pimp provides physical protection, advertising, and/or a location for practise of the trade. Contrary to contemporary prostitution, during most of the pre-twentieth century Parisian brothels were actually run by madams, the female equivalent of a pimp. “Procuring”, the fourth term associated with prostitution, has been identified since the turn of the twentieth century with international slave trafficking and human bondage. Prior to that time, procurers were often synonymous with pimps and madams who lured prostitutes into their brothels, promising them a better life than unprotected street walkers. In the last several decades, procuring has taken on a more sinister meaning because of organized crime which is identified with cartels and mafia-type networks.

Another set of definitions is in order as well to set the stage for the history of French prostitution. In France from the sixteenth century to the present, there have been three governmental positions regarding the external manifestations of prostitution: toleration, regulation, and abolition. The legal position called “toleration” characterized most of the late mediaeval period, the early modern period except for the reign of Louis xiv, and the Revolutionary years. Prostitutes were free to practise their trade unless they were engaged in another proscribed activity or they engaged in notorious or scandalous behaviour. The legal position known as “regulationism” was incorporated into French practice and law by 1804. Under the system of regulation, the “French System” was established to register and monitor prostitutes. The intent was to encourage prostitutes to practise their trade in houses of prostitution (maisons de tolérance or maisons closes) that were under the surveillance of the state. Allegedly families were protected in this way, innocent women could venture from their homes without fear of being mistaken for prostitutes, and a healthy population was assured because of the examinations and confinement of prostitutes for venereal diseases. Ultimately France became a model for other countries in dealing with prostitution.

“Abolition” is the third position, and it is the most difficult to define. Two contradictory meanings have been associated with abolitionism: (1) the elimination of regulationist laws including particularly brothel prostitution, while allowing for the continued practice of prostitution, or (2) the eradication of prostitution, particularly forced prostitution. ¹¹ The first meaning characterizes some debates and actions that occurred in the twentieth century, while the second meaning represents some of the current discourses.

A Social and Labour History of Prostitution in Paris

The Seventeenth Century: Morality, Repression, and Confinement

By the time of Louis xiv in the last half of the seventeenth century, the population of Paris had grown to 500,000. Although Louis xiv had established his residence at Versailles, he kept an eye on Paris, and he intended to bring a regeneration of morality to the French kingdom’s largest city. As one historian described the king, he was the “watchdog of Parisian sin”. ²⁰ Systematically, Louis xiv chartered the Hôpital-Général in 1656, including the Salpêtrière as a prison-hospital for women, created the office of lieutenant of police in 1667 to consolidate royal authority, established the Bon Pasteur in 1698 for repentant prostitutes as a model for other places of refuge and Christian rehabilitation, and created systems to deal with petty crime, felonies, gambling, smuggling, sorcery, recalcitrant subjects, and anything that seemed outside of good public order. Because he had created a powerful bureaucracy and a policing system to work with him, he was the first French king to produce significant results.

Breaking with the historic French tradition of toleration, Louis xiv instigated the “Great Confinement”. The police swept “the mad, sinful, and non-compliant”, including prostitutes, into the Hôpital-Général. ²¹ Corruption of the flesh and corruption of the soul were seen as being equally pernicious and in some ways synonymous, so both were placed under the control of the police. In essence, prostitution became linked to sin, and sin was linked to punishment, rehabilitation, and/or confinement. ²² Simply speaking, the earlier discourse on public order had been taken to a new level; everything tied to prostitution was an assault on society and a denigration of the kingdom and God’s order. Prostitutes were not sex workers, they were “fallen women”.

The most significant statement of this conflation of social order and spiritual order was found in the Réglement du Roi of 20 April 1684. Its provisions included the following: (1) that debauched women, public prostitutes, women engaged in scandalous behaviour, or those who led others into prostitution would be imprisoned in the Salpêtrière by order of the king, the court, or the lieutenant of police; (2) that incarcerated women would be required to participate in mass, medical treatments if needed, a regimen of prayer and catechism, and appropriate work; (3) that they could wear only coarse homespun garments and clogs, eat only bread, soup, and water, and sleep on straw mattresses; and (4) that, if they deviated from their regimen or exhibited slothful behaviour, they would be subject to severe measures including solitary confinement and loss of any previously earned privileges. ²³ It was a penitentiary regime in which prison terms were not specified, but up to six months tended to be the duration of their incarceration so long as they showed signs of remorse, repentance, or contrition. Three years later, Louis xiv further protected his “island of purity” by declaring that all prostitutes found in Versailles or within a radius of two leagues would be mutilated, i.e., their ears would be clipped. Regardless of whether prostitutes arrived in Paris alone or found companionship with other menial working girls, there appeared to be no subculture of prostitution. There was, however, a mixed message. Some prostitutes could be rehabilitated; others would be permanently marked for what they were.

The Eighteenth Century: Redefining Prostitution, Police Control, and Hygiene

At the end of Louis xiv’s reign came the most significant ordinance that governed the remainder of the pre-Revolutionary eighteenth century. It was the Ordonnance royale of 26 July 1713. With this declaration, the authority of the police over prostitution in Paris was assured, shifting jurisdiction from courts such as the Châtelet directly to the police. Interpretations of this ordinance vary dramatically, but instead of providing common prostitutes with more due process, those who were rounded up in the raids were judged en masse. On average, 600 to 800 cases were handled by the lieutenant general per year. Only one or two cases were heard by the Châtelet (criminal court), and no appeals reached the Parlement (highest court of France). What did all of this mean? Ultimately there were two definitions spelled out in the royal ordinance. The first was public debauchery and scandalous behaviour, and the second was procuring. The first definition was expressly vague and therefore less punitive. Were these women prostitutes? According to the law, not necessarily, so they were judged by the lieutenant general, sentenced with a fine or forced to make a payment to charity, stripped of their belongings which were distributed to the poor, and required to leave the city or face more stringent penalties. If they chose to appeal, they would remain in custody until the appeal was completed. This first type of behaviour was classed as a misdemeanour, with no prison time necessarily assigned. According to studies of the period, few women chose to appeal, and their choice not to appeal was a very conscious one. They could begin again, reconstruct themselves, ply their trade elsewhere, and retain their economic independence. Ultimately, their survival depended on their ability to control their earnings. ²⁴ Under the royal ordinance, the streets could be cleaned up rather quickly, and nightly rounds became more and more routine.

In the second case of procuring or organized prostitution, for which corporal punishment would likely be invoked, cases were remanded to the criminal courts. Because due process had to be carefully applied, evidence suggests that few cases went this route. ²⁵ In other words, the system simply avoided the more difficult cases. While jurists argued the nuances of the law, the police took the most direct route to assuring public order, and prostitutes looked out for themselves.

During the time of the Regency after Louis xiv’s death, the language of sin no longer dominated the discourse on prostitution. By mid-century, prostitution came more and more to be defined as a condition, not yet pathological, or as a state of being. Importantly, prostitutes served a purpose because they often led police to other criminal elements in society. Mistresses, who were under the surveillance of a Department of Kept Women beginning in 1747, were also important to the police. They were ultimately part of the intelligence apparatus of the Paris police inspectors. ²⁶ Like many common prostitutes, the dames entretenues (kept women or mistresses) frequently came from the subordinate classes or the lower-middling groups in society, but their pathways led to greater economic security. They could move in the same circles as actresses or those in the theatre and opera, take on the style and pretensions of those above them, and negotiate relationships that sometimes provided permanent patron-mistress arrangements, marriage, or other access to steady income. The police watched them closely because it was believed that they could enfeeble and impoverish those who fell prey to them. Ultimately those who came to Paris, mostly from the north and east of France, followed several paths to elite prostitution. They were sold into elite prostitution to support their families, fled their families because of a sexual encounter, sought other ways to assist their families by seeking employment in Paris and ended up first as prostitutes and then as kept women, or consciously chose a better life among the Parisian demimonde. ²⁷ What separates them from other prostitutes was their ability to accumulate more than subsistence earnings, either through their patrons or other networks. They worked a system that seemed to always have a place for them.

When it came to police targets, the eighteenth-century obsession was with non-resident paupers, the homeless, and beggars. ²⁸ During this period of scarcity, more young women moved to Paris, looking for a marriage and a better life. Yet, the city had little to offer them. They were targets for unscrupulous employers and at the mercy of those who rented them furnished rooms. Not surprisingly they became easy prey for pimps and madams, particularly if they had no network or means of sufficient support. Many public women avoided police notice, but those who were disruptive or who had caused a scandal in the eyes of the police or their neighbours were rounded up for police audiences and transported in an open cart, often with their heads shaved and in chains, to prison-hospitals. ²⁹

Additional ordinances in this century condemned sodomites and women found in military encampments. Interestingly, the ordinance only covered women who were not native to the area and who were without employment. By 1768, the ordinance was re-issued to cover all women who were suspected of prostitution. Penalties were increased to incarceration and treatment for venereal diseases. Laws were mute on prostitution per se, but its public manifestations were to be masked. Other pre-revolutionary ordinances in 1778 and 1780 established fines for renting properties to prostitutes, for allowing unmarried men and women to cohabit, for welcoming them into cabarets and places of entertainment, as well as for not filing the appropriate paperwork for persons living in boarding houses and furnished rooms. New curfews were also established. ³⁰

The Demographics of Eighteenth-Century Prostitutes

Who were the Paris prostitutes of the eighteenth century? Based on the records of Saint-Martin for 1765, 1766, and 1770, over 97 per cent of the 2,069 women who were arrested were employed in some manner, although their occupations were self-reported. Three-quarters of the women were between 18 and 30 years of age, and there were very few who were younger than 15, in spite of period literature that painted prostitutes as pubescent girls ready for the taking. Of the prostitutes in Saint-Martin, 49.3 per cent cited that they were employed in clothing, textiles, or decorative trades, e.g., from menders, seamstresses, artificial flower makers, and embroiderers to designers of luxury wardrobes. Yet, the greatest number of prostitutes fell among the most menial and least paid occupations. ³¹ It was widely stated that the clothing trades were the pathways to becoming a prostitute or a courtesan, and that, in some cases, shops were used for soliciting. Table 7.1 provides specific data on their occupations.

View Table

For the most part, the women were single, either earning less than they needed to survive or not earning enough for the support of their families or partners. When the price of bread climbed dramatically in the 1770s, survival hung in the balance. During most of the eighteenth century, prostitution was not a particularly permanent profession, but it was employment. Women passed in and out of it as needed or as they wanted to finance a better life. ³²

Regardless of the data, contemporary accounts of prostitution argued that permanent prostitution had become a scourge. In 1762, one writer estimated that there were 25,000 prostitutes in Paris, although another later writer speculated that there were 30,000 on the streets and another 10,000 who were kept women or who were brothel residents. ³³ In that context, Nicholas Restif de La Bretonne published Le Pornographe, which was a treatise on prostitution, a call for public health measures, and a recommendation for the regulation of prostitution in what he called the Parthénions. These proposed “houses of pleasure” required clients to bathe, have appointments lasting no longer than half an hour with the resident prostitutes, and avoid drunkenness. Women would be subject to a regimen of reading, work of their choice, walking in the on-site park, or studying music or dancing. The Parthénions were also destined to have another function as “houses of populationism” because children borne from the liaisons would be raised there. In this way, the French population would grow, venereal disease would be managed, and prostitution would be contained. In particular, Restif argued that the basest, foulest forms of prostitution would be eradicated. The “meat markets” of brazen, half nude, lewd women would be gone from the streets of Paris. All prostitutes would be required to enter the Parthénions under penalty of prison, and outside of extraordinary circumstances like marriage, they would remain there for their entire lives. ³⁴ Some of what Restif wrote sounded like a return to the mediaeval municipal brothels. But, the Parthénions were also idyllic, even romantic, in their plan, and they also were designed to remove the stigma of venal sex and illegitimate children.

In the writings of Restif and his contemporaries (and there were many) it was argued that prostitution should be firmly institutionalized. ³⁵ A few cahiers de doléances (grievances to the king) on the eve of the Revolution condemned immorality with a broad brush; but, next to them, there was a wildly popular trade in satires, lampoons, pornography, and scandal sheets. Those publications were joined by a number of almanacs of the “girls” of the Palais Royal that described prostitutes’ individual physical properties, the variety of sexual acts they could provide, their addresses, and their rates. ³⁶ To a certain degree, prostitution was being confirmed as a fact of life, whether tolerated or regulated. Even the Encyclopédie Méthodique’s article on prostitution confirmed that a woman had the right to dispose of her body as she pleased. Ultimately the key was that notoriety be avoided and no scandals should result. ³⁷ There were underlying reasons for prostitution: male desire and female misery. Neither was going to be remedied in the short term, if at all. The discussion during the Revolutionary years, therefore, dealt with individual liberty, public order, and public health.

Cleaning up the Streets: Prostitution and Social Control during the French Revolution

Among the first acts of the Revolution was a sweeping away the ordinances and decrees of the Old Order, creating the need for new principles of law and a new judicial structure. Yet again, regulations on prostitution per se were not introduced. A law of 16–24 August 1790 specified that good order in public places had to be maintained, and a decree of 10 July 1791 remanded women found in army barracks to the civilian police rather than to the military. The omnibus Code of 19–22 July 1791 brought no further direction to policing prostitution. While it dealt with problems like noise, public gatherings, counterfeit keys, rickety street-side display racks, transvestites, pots of urine thrown from windows, and pots of flowers perched perilously close to window ledges, definitions of anything relating to prostitution were entirely absent. ³⁸

In this fluid population of 630,000 Parisians, the police went to work. The mandate was not just to purge the streets of undesirables and effluvia, but to clean up any and all dangers to citizens. One of the most striking dangers was venereal disease. In 1793, when health inspections were required for all women who were arrested for soliciting, over 40 per cent of the women were found to be diseased. These women were referred to the Hospice des Vénériens for treatment; others were sent to nearby prisons depending on the gravity of their offences. Penalties for prostitutes who ended up at the Correctional Tribunal were significantly less severe than for offenses which were explicitly covered in the code. Begging, for example, carried a one-year prison term. Debauchery, if applied under Title 2 of the Code of 1791, carried a one-year prison term and a fine. Women who chose prostitution, however, generally served three to four months, even if they were caught committing a flagrant offense. If a woman could supply character witnesses, if there wasn’t sufficient evidence to make a case against her, or if there wasn’t enough space in the police holding tank, it was likely that she would be released within a period of hours or days. ³⁹

The Demographics of Prostitutes during the French Revolution

Who were these women? According to one study of this period, ⁴⁰ of the 251 prostitutes who were arrested for solicitation in the section of Paris called Butte des Moulins, 62 per cent were born in the provinces and had recently arrived in the city. Nearly 92 per cent were single. They were also younger than their counterparts earlier in the century. For the first time, a significant number of prostitutes stated that they had no occupation other than prostitution. Table 7.2 provides a more detailed view of the jobs of the 227 who reported an occupation.

View Table

Gone from the occupations were laundresses and errand runners. In many cases, their clients had emigrated from France prior to or during the Terror. In the case of washerwomen, the price of soap had become prohibitive, and the supply of clients was uncertain. Given the strict penalties for begging, being a prostitute had its positive aspects. If arrested, the prison sentence was shorter. If a prostitute lived in a house that was not known by the police, she could effectively be invisible and immune from prosecution. Policies such as these could not have gone unnoticed. While unstated, the national policy was nothing less than a form of social control. Prostitutes would frequently be swept from the streets and bawdy houses, they would be punished but not too severely, those who were diseased would be treated, and a firm moral order would be claimed by those in authority.

The Birth of the “French System”

Already in 1791, the police had begun what was tantamount to registration. This practice was regularized under the Central Bureau of the Paris police by 1799. Prostitutes were also subject to medical examinations as early as 1792 and automatically sent for prison treatment if they were infected with the “venereal poison”. This practice was institutionalized under Napoleon in 1802, and, in 1805, the Dispensary of Saint Lazare was established. By 1810, fortnightly medical inspections were mandated. ⁴¹ According to contemporary accounts, maisons de tolérance (licensed brothels) began springing up in Paris, and 180 were recognized by the end of the First Empire in 1815. By 1823, all brothels were licensed. On two points, all French governments—Revolutionary, Napoleonic, and Restoration—agreed: there was a proper role for women as moral, upright mothers who taught their children the virtues of the Fatherland, but there was also a place for prostitution as a continuing means of social control. Men, who tended to marry later in life, needed an outlet for their “excess” sexuality; the family needed to be preserved; and women who fell into prostitution, whether through poverty, rape, or fornication, should be monitored because they would never turn back. Ultimately, public women played a role in the public life of France so long as they did not challenge bourgeois sensibilities. ⁴²

From 1836 until 1848, under the Prefect of Police Gabriel Delessert a series of police ordinances and practices were put into place consolidating what was becoming the regulation of prostitution in France, particularly in Paris. Beyond the licensing of brothels and registration of prostitutes, many other aspects of venal sex had to be defined. It is important to note that at the beginning of the century prostitutes had already been designated as soumises or inscrites (registered) and insoumises (unregistered). The Réglement of 16 November 1843 finalized police action regarding the two types of prostitution: clandestine and tolerated. In both cases, according to authorities these women were likely to spread venereal diseases. According to the statute, the punishments should be severe enough to make them register or enter a licensed brothel because maisons de tolérance were governed by very specific regulations, including the daily surveillance of brothels, the expectation that madams would follow all police procedures including medical examinations for the residents, conformity to all curfews, and the interdiction of admitting students, uniformed soldiers, and youths under 18 years of age. ⁴³ To a certain degree, madams had become agents of the government if they wished to continue their business.

As nineteenth-century bureaucrats, doctors, and politicians became obsessed with urban pathology, they studied prostitutes along with “other urban untouchables who work[ed] with mire, ordure, excrement, and carrion.” ⁴⁴ Besides the scientific methods with which they intended to count everything, they also considered what they believed to be the needs of nineteenth-century bourgeois society. Railroads and industrialization had brought more young people into Paris. In fact, the city grew in size from 657,172 inhabitants in 1817 to over one million inhabitants in 1851. ⁴⁵ Table 7.3 breaks down the numbers of unmarried males and females as of mid-century. It should be noted that according to common practice and Napoleonic law ⁴⁶ men tended to marry later (by a half decade) and represented a larger portion of the population aged between 15 and 35.

View Table

Among the most influential writers on prostitution in nineteenth-century Paris was Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet, whose De la prostitution dans la ville de Paris, considérée sous le rapport de l’hygiène publique, de la morale et de l’administration was published in 1836. In his meticulous study of registered prostitutes, he searched for anything that would define them sociologically, biologically, or geographically. ⁴⁷ Of the 12,707 prostitutes who registered between April 1816 and April 1831, he traced father’s employment, domiciles, ages, networks, and physical features, including whether or not their genitalia were like non-prostitutes. He concluded that for the most part the prostitutes were “constrained by economic need to practice [their] trade.” If they were Parisian born, they generally were daughters of artisan fathers who were not well educated and who became domestics or were employed in the trades. One out of two was marginally literate, and only one fourth of the women were illegitimate. Of more than 5,000 prostitutes who provided a reason for taking up prostitution, half reported that they had chosen to do so because they were destitute or had lost their parents or home. Of the remainder, they had been abandoned by lovers, soldiers, or students, or they were responsible for family members, from siblings to elderly parents. Finally, there were those who had come to Paris to escape their previous provincial existence and to find a better life in the city. Among the prostitutes whom Parent-Duchâtelet interviewed, he found that they often took on pseudonyms, used argot peculiar to their trade, and drank hard liquor but they formed communities in which they cared for each other, nursed each other during pregnancies, and communally cared for children. ⁴⁸

Although Parent-Duchâtelet first hypothesized that that vice was hereditary, a belief common among many of his contemporaries, his evidence did not support that position. In the end, he saw prostitution as a passage in life, a category of labour. He stated, “Like begging, like gambling, it is an industry, a resource against hunger or against dishonour, because one does not know to what ends an individual will go when they have no resources.” ⁴⁹ Because his conclusions were very nuanced, De la prostitution dans la ville de Paris was used both as an apology for and a justification of regulated houses of prostitution.

The Second Empire and the Formalization of the “French System”

Growth during the Second Empire doubled the size of Paris yet again. ⁵⁰ This increase in the population was partially a continuing result of migration from the provinces, typically from the north of France. The pattern of employment had also changed as industrialization grew. Although entire non-Parisian families had been employed in small enterprises in the first half of the nineteenth century, by the latter half men were the most likely to be employees in larger factories that required some level of skill. Nonetheless, Paris had more adult bachelors than any other city in the French state because salaries were still too low for them to support dependents. As a corollary, single women who moved to Paris were the least likely to find employment, and salaries were predicated on the assumption that females had membership in a family. Therefore, salaries for young women were even lower, often forcing them into multiple positions, including prostitution.

While prostitution did not increase in proportion to the growth of the city, concerns about venereal disease did. The language of depopulation again surfaced, and there was the further fear that prostitution would undermine families. As the result of an administrative note of 1864, prostitutes could no longer refuse to register if they were in police custody or working in brothels. ⁵¹ Individual liberty, it appeared, had been sacrificed to public protection. By 1878 and 1879, additional regulations supporting the police des moeurs (vice squad) had been added to remind madams of their service to the government; brothels had to be dispersed to avoid scandals, windows had to be shuttered or covered, a potentially diseased woman had to be taken to the dispensary immediately, and madams were responsible for the actions of their prostitutes even outside of the house of prostitution. ⁵² Was it a form of labour? Yes, the police and other regulationists agreed. Was it consistent with bourgeois sensibilities? The answer depended on the point of view. William Acton, who studied prostitution in Paris and London, noted that the Parisian system calmed the streets and led to less bawdiness and gaudiness. Therefore, it protected sensibilities. ⁵³ Other writers repeated that it was not consistent with bourgeois sensibilities, but it was a necessity of life to avoid even worse sexual abuses and dangers to the family.

Turn-of-the-Century Reform Efforts

The end of the nineteenth century brought new reasons to deal with prostitution: the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts in England, the visits of international reformers like Josephine Butler, and the continuing spectre of venereal diseases. The new discourse of abolitionism combined civil liberties, double standards, medical reform, and the protection of women. Some abolitionists demanded the elimination of the vice squad while others established a crusade against immorality, debauchery, and the victimization of women. Although some momentum was gained through this abolitionist coalition, the governmental crisis of 1877 halted national debates. In the interim, the Union international des amies de la jeune fille stepped in to monitor employment bureaus and railroad stations which were widely seen as the hubs of the white slave trade.

Just after the turn of the century, two other sources of abolitionist sentiment rekindled the debate. Cases of venereal disease in France and among French troops in the colonies had increased alarmingly, and the international press thrived on exposés of white slavery. In Paris, for example, from 13 to 15 per cent of the male population was syphilitic, ⁵⁸ infants allegedly died at an alarming rate, and, in its later stages, the ravishing disease could be undetectable. In the case of white slavery, it was argued that procurers established themselves at railway stations near the Tour Saint-Jacques in the city centre and on the heights of Montmartre providing promises of lodging and employment. By the time of the 1902 international conference on white slavery, newspapers widely reported that there was a traffic in virgins, suppliers were growing wealthy, and the overseas military was playing a role in creating demand for prostitutes. ⁵⁹ The results of the conference were promulgated in France in 1905, but the international convention functionally reaffirmed surveillance rather than abolishing the trade.

Throughout the debates, there was one other position voiced on prostitution: neo-regulationism. In the absence of national or international law, this became the new “French System”. The system blended bourgeois values and a more humane treatment of prostitutes. Over time, fewer and fewer prostitutes lived in maisons de tolérance and more practised their trade in what were called maisons de rendez-vous, which were non-residential houses of prostitution. Owners monitored the women who worked there, photographing and registering them, forbade alcohol and advertising, and required that prostitutes undergo their medical examinations. The change to maisons de rendez-vous had taken place gradually, so much so that by 1903 less than 1 per cent of prostitutes lived in the houses where they worked. ⁶⁰ Furthermore, proposals made by the Prefect of Police, Louis Lépine, carried the day: a sanitary office replaced the hated police des moeurs, health cards and health inspections were required, and a more humanitarian treatment of venereal diseases was instituted. Although debates continued at the municipal level, the only national legislation that was passed was the Rousseil Law of 15 April 1908 which dealt with the prostitution of minors. ⁶¹

From the World Wars to Abolitionism

In the period just before World War i, neo-regulationism, toleration, and increased surveillance defined prostitution. During the war, prostitutes left Paris briefly, fearing that they would be confined to work camps, and three-quarters of the brothels closed. By the time of the armistice, however, new maisons de rendez-vous had been established, some of them quite deluxe. More policing occurred around railway stations and barracks, and sanitary measures were dramatically increased. Already in decline, the maisons de tolérance did not reappear; in fact, no more than thirty were in existence after the war. ⁶² In the interwar period, as sexuality became less confined, dance halls, cinemas and theatres were combined with maisons de rendez-vous to draw clients into the establishments. Maisons d’abbatage also sprang up, offering quick sex without entertainment or any ambiance. In these larger establishments, each prostitute typically serviced thirty to fifty clients per day. ⁶³ Allegedly, any type of sex could be requested.

World War ii, the fall of France, and the German occupation created an interesting new political coalition between the reactionary right and the republican left. The 1930s, after all, had been perceived as entirely too liberating, particularly for women, and it was argued that patriarchal authority needed to be re-established. Not surprisingly, there were serious discussions about ending the “French System” but what occurred instead was a movement to purify morals and protect the family. Maisons de tolérance were recreated, soon becoming a “masterful piece of the social and moral order” because they were discrete, carefully regulated, and provided a service. ⁶⁴ Under the German occupation, certain brothels were reserved for officers, while others were maintained for enlisted men. Brothels, made famous by their earlier clientele, gained new notice, e.g., Le Chabanais, Le Sphinx, and the One Two Two.

The first major change in French policy occurred immediately after World War ii with the Marthe Richard Law, so named for a former prostitute and member of the municipal council of the 4th arrondisement of Paris. Reflecting on the use of brothels by the German Wehrmacht and French collaborators, Richard demanded their closure, citing the sordid memories attached to the houses of prostitution, the vast numbers of women whose heads had been shaved and who had been assaulted for “horizontal collaboration”, and an increase in venereal diseases that had taken place in spite of alleged health examinations. ⁶⁵ All prostitutes—whether registered, independent, or occasional—were, in a common phrase, “spreading disease like shotgun pellets”. ⁶⁶ Furthermore, Richard championed a new regard for women, stating unequivocally: “A woman is a human being, not merchandise.” ⁶⁷ Richard was not alone in wanting the brothels closed, and a short-lived coalition provided the votes. When all was said and done, 178 brothels were closed along with 6,000 hotel rooms that were turned into lodgings. Police registration was ended, and the formal elements of regulationism were dismantled. ⁶⁸ Yet, only a few days after enactment of the Marthe Richard Law, a new social and health registration was placed on the books. ⁶⁹

Abolitionism, French Equivocation, and Prostitute Protests

French policy toward the outward manifestations of prostitution officially changed from regulationism to abolitionism in 1960 when the French government ratified the un “Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others”. ⁷⁰ In spite of adopting an abolitionist position, the following three decades in France saw little change in the governmental response to prostitution. Police cleaned up the streets, defined offenses as they saw them, and acted on interpretations of the law because there were few absolutes. Only in 1975, when police harassment became particularly visible, was there a visceral response by prostitutes themselves. The response began in Lyons on 2 June 1975, when nearly a hundred prostitutes occupied a church to bring media attention to police harassment. Paris prostitutes immediately joined what became a national demonstration, going on strike and demanding health benefits and changes to the Penal Code. ⁷¹ However, without continuing formal leadership, the movement died out by spring 1976.

What had occurred was the beginning of a dramatic change. Prostitutes explicitly defined themselves as sex workers, became their own advocates, expressed their own grievances, sought allies, and began a social movement. Historically, regulationists and abolitionists had excluded prostitutes from debates about them. As such, prostitutes often were characterized as having no agency, being mere pawns because they had no choice, or being pathologically inclined to delinquency. ⁷² Furthermore, prostitutes tended to come from the lowest classes and often had little education. According to a study of French prostitutes, “only 39 per cent had access to health insurance; approximately 50 per cent lived in temporary accommodation (hotel or no fixed address); 37 per cent were dependent upon one or several drugs (including alcohol); and 33 per cent had been victims of physical assault during the five months preceding the study.” ⁷³ It is not surprising that aid societies, Christian organizations, organizations offering medical support, and the occasional liberal feminist became the spokespersons for prostitutes.

In the late 1990s, debates on prostitution resurfaced at the same time as international and European measures were endorsed on child pornography, child prostitution, and transnational crime cartels. In Paris, the increase of immigrants created a new focus, reflecting on all forms of prostitution—female, male, and transgendered. As such, the Penal Code of 1994 provided a specific definition of procuring in a number of paragraphs in Chapter 5, Article 225: (1) making a profit from prostitution or receiving an immoral income; (2) living above one’s own means, while either living with a prostitute or being in continual relations with one or more habitual prostitutes; (3) selling or offering non-public locations to known prostitutes; and (4) selling, leasing, or providing vehicles that could be used in forms of prostitution. ⁷⁴ Because of the specificity of the definitions, prostitutes actively challenged the law. The sanctions could, in fact, encompass taxi drivers who took them to their clients, hotel managers and staff who rented rooms to them, and even an unemployed or invalid husband who lived from the proceeds of his wife’s prostitution.

Lines were drawn in a false dichotomy of abolitionism versus regulationism. New abolitionists adopted a platform of aid to victims, defining all prostitutes as victims and not questioning distinctions between forced prostitution and voluntary (free) prostitution. According to them, prostitution needed to be eradicated to protect women from violence and dehumanization. In opposition, sex workers, their allies, and their advocates framed their arguments around labour rights, arguing that prostitution was a legitimate economic choice and practitioners should be given rights and protections under the law.

In 2002, with the election of a centrist-right government, prostitution became a “law and order” issue of domestic security. ⁷⁵ Even before the Sarkozy Law had been fully vetted, masked Parisian prostitutes took to the streets, protesting the criminalization of passive soliciting which could lead to “six months in jail for a smile.” ⁷⁶ Issues included lengthier detentions for illegal immigrants and the potential deportation of non-French prostitutes if they did not identify their pimps. According to a well-known abolitionist organization, 70 per cent of immigrant prostitutes who work in France have no identity papers. More than half of the prostitutes are foreigners and most come from eastern Europe and former French colonies in Africa. ⁷⁷ Because they are often controlled by pimps and foreign procurers, according to the police, they are a threat to law and order. They are also engaged in a lucrative trade that attracts further crime. According to government statistics, they each annually pay approximately €150,000 to their pimps for massive earnings of millions of euros. ⁷⁸

When the government of France moved forward with its anti-crime agenda, the mayor of Paris conducted his own enquiry into the implications of the Sarkozy Law. He authorized a group of scholars and urban researchers affiliated with the Centre national de recherche scientifique (cnrs) to gather facts, statistics, and human stories. The result of their research was a 300-page volume, simply titled La prostitution à Paris. ⁷⁹ Without making value judgements, they identified and interviewed male, female, and transgendered prostitutes, bar girls, street walkers (regardless of gender), and those who practised their trade in cars and vans.

As the mayor’s enquiry progressed, certain areas in Paris came to be viewed as “prostitute-friendly” including the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes. ⁸⁰ Researchers interviewed their subjects in those areas, while also developing a classification of current prostitution. Unlike the taxonomies of Parent-Duchâtelet, twenty-first century prostitution is defined by location as a function of age, longevity as a sex worker, drugs, and nationality. Along the old streets in the centre of the city, traditional French prostitutes still remain. Averaging 40 years of age, they are viewed as vestiges of a certain Parisian lifestyle. Along the boulevards named for the marshals of France and around the old city customs barriers, one finds Africans and eastern Europeans. With the arrival of sex shops in the 1970s, more Chinese entered the trade. In the Bois de Boulogne, South-American transsexuals, along with other male prostitutes, work the winding paths and conduct their trade in parked cars. According to voyeurs, of whom there are many, there is a certain theatricality to the activities in the Bois de Boulogne. In the Bois de Vincennes, on the eastern periphery of Paris, prostitution is more traditionally female, made up predominantly of African immigrants and conducted in panel trucks or vans. ⁸¹

For the researchers involved in the mayor’s project, there was only one conclusion: prostitutes who wished to leave sex work should be assisted in doing so, and the conditions for prostitutes who continued their profession should be ameliorated. ⁸² To “exit” prostitution is costly, potentially dangerous, and fraught with delays. Prostitutes must pay retroactive taxes to the government; and, if they are immigrants, they must divulge the name of their pimp or procurer, leading to his or her arrest. If they do not have identity cards, they can be deported even if they inform on their pimp or procurer. Critics of the current system charge the government with acting as a pimp. It receives tax revenues from prostitutes and benefits from their earnings.

While there is an historic and literary French nostalgia about prostitution, new, young, non-French, racially and ethnically diverse prostitutes have not been romanticized. Instead, the discourse about prostitution has left prostitutes entangled in a web of contradictory practices. While prostitution remains a civil liberty, the increasing number of foreign sex workers, the assaults on neighbourhood security by crime cartels, and illegal immigration have all placed sex work in the popular press and on the floor of the National Assembly. In December 2011, French deputies, both of the left and right, adopted a non-binding resolution reconfirming the un Convention of 1960 and the proposed sentencing of clients of prostitutes to six months in prison with a fine of €3,000. Headlines declared, “The deputies adopted an anti-prostitution resolution”. ⁸³ Yet, even when the French government adopted the un “Resolution Suppressing the Traffic in Persons”, it did so with a caveat: “The free exercise of prostitution is allowed for those who practise it individually.” ⁸⁴ In this statement, one can almost hear the voices of Augustine, Aquinas, and the French Revolutionaries: i.e., prostitution is a necessary part of life and an individual liberty. So, prostitution per se remained outside the statute, and prostitutes continued to be subjected to police harassment and arrest, although le racolage passif (passive soliciting) was removed from the Sarkozy Law in 2012, but only briefly.

As of December 2013, with the support of the socialist Hollande government, the French National Assembly overwhelmingly approved a bill to impose a €1,500 fine on persons who pay for sex. ⁸⁵ Seen as one of the most expansive pieces of legislation for the abolition of prostitution, it was patterned after the Swedish model of going after clients of prostitutes. When the bill reached the French Senate in early 2014, the Senate established a Special Commission to review the findings and implications of the proposed legislation. For the first time, legislators actually gathered testimony from sex workers. On 8 July 2014, the Senate commission highlighted the two most significant provisions: continuation of the decriminalization of soliciting and removal of the fine for clients. ⁸⁶ The latter elicited significant responses from both sides of the political spectrum. Ultimately, the debate continued, even with topless prostitutes taking over the Senate chamber in support of their clients. ⁸⁷ As of 30 March 2015, the Senate returned to a position akin to the Sarkozy Law. ⁸⁸ Since then, both houses of France’s parliament have made further modifications to the statute, particularly concerning the links between prostitution and human trafficking, reinsertion of former prostitutes into French society, and what to do about Internet sites for cyber soliciting.

While prostitution cannot be separated from disease, violence, crime, and human trafficking, the French situation is complex and fraught with paradoxes. Where does individual liberty end, including the right to use one’s body as a form of labour? Where does governmental intervention for the protection of others begin? Is prostitution forced or free? Are all prostitutes victims, or do some practise prostitution as a choice? Is prostitution a form of labour? If prostitutes use parts of their bodies to ply their trade, in doing so, are they so different from manual labourers who use their arms, backs, and hands to earn a living?

Over a half century has passed since the adoption of the un Convention and more than a decade since the Sarkozy Law magnified the contradictions in French policy. The French are attempting to find a middle path, but it is not possible to separate prostitution from prostitutes, whether they are French or immigrant. If prostitution is permissible under the law, then it might be argued that prostitutes should be entitled to equal protection and equal benefits. If they attempt to leave prostitution, government support should be provided, including access to social services, health care, and transitional training and employment. If there are other issues, e.g., crime cartels, a continuing traffic in human beings, and international procuring, then those issues must be dealt with on their own terms. In the end, there are no easy answers, but as they have been framed, the current laws remain unsatisfactory.