The Magdalenes

Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century

Linda Mahood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136247828
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

The nineteenth century witnessed a discursive explosion around the subject of sex. Historical evidence indicates that the sexual behaviour which had always been punishable began to be spoken of, regulated, and policed in new ways. Prostitutes were no longer dragged through the town, dunked in lakes, whipped and branded. Medieval forms of punishment shifted from the emphasis on punishing the body to punishing the mind.

Building on the work of Foucault, Walkowitz, and Mort, Linda Mahood traces and examines new approached emerging throughout the nineteenth century towards prostitution and looks at the apparatus and institutions created for its regulation and control. In particular, throughout the century, the bourgeoisie contributed regularly to the discourse on the prostitution problem, the debate focusing on the sexual and vocational behaviour of working class women. The thrust of the discourse, however, was not just repression or control but the moral reform – through religious training, moral education, and training in domestic service – of working class women.

With her emphasis on Scottish 'magdalene' homes and a case study of the system of police repression used in Glasgow, Linda Mahood has written the first book of its kind dealing with these issues in Scotland. At the same time the book sets nineteenth-century treatment of prostitutes in Scotland into the longer run of British attempts to control 'drabs and harlots', and contributes to the wider discussion of 'dangerous female sexuality' in a male-dominated society.

Part One The birth of social medicine and the state

DOI: 10.4324/9780203104057-2

Steps taken towards the control of major epidemic diseases such as syphilis are amongst the earliest Scottish attempts at social medicine. ¹ The birth of social medicine was largely the result of developments in the scientific community and the discovery that many diseases were not ‘scourges’ from God, but curable, or at least controllable. Venereal disease and its link with prostitution is an example of this. The medical interest in prostitution grew out of the public health movement. Though public health is usually associated with contagious diseases and sanitation problems it is also concerned with social issues. ² The history of the surveillance and control of venereal disease and prostitution in Scotland from the late fifteenth to the early nineteenth century enables us to see how the antecedents of the nineteenth-century discourses on prostitution and their technologies of power were rooted in the theories of social medicine which date back centuries. ³

From the outset attempts to control the spread of venereal infections were based on a double standard of sexual behaviour: legislation intended to control syphilis amongst the general population was often directed at women only. Examples of this process appear in the Kirk Session and Town Council records between 1497 and 1800. By reviewing this legislation it is possible to illustrate that the shift away from medieval forms of punishment for sexual offences such as fornication, prostitution, and adultery does not indicate a relaxing of the moral code or a move towards permissiveness. ⁴ Although social medicine rapidly focused its attention on the living arrangements of the urban poor, and this attention appeared to derive its impetus from ‘class fear’, early medicine had its own internal dynamic and a history which is not immediately reducible to economic and political class relations. ⁵ It was, however, reducible to patriarchal gender relations, in so far as both the local state and the medical initiatives had a direct moral message for women. Through early theories of disease, germs, and contagion the medical discourse created a new area of professional expertise. Sexual immorality and sexual disease were among the first targets for the new professional physicians, who rapidly developed a medical knowledge, language, theories, and specialist hospitals, such as lock hospitals, for the control and regulation of their affected clientele.

The Scottish lock hospitals and female penitentiaries that were established by 1800 are examples of the new technologies of social disciplining and systems of incarceration which continued to evolve in the nineteenth century. They differed from existing institutions of physical punishment or medical cure because they focused on the surveillance and regulation of the individual’s moral character and not just their physical health or behaviour and they were intended exclusively for women. Sexual behaviour did not become more repressed by the nineteenth century, however. Historical evidence taken from contemporary accounts of the size and structure of nineteenth-century prostitution and the brothel systems, plus an analysis of popular literature indicates that the nineteenth century did not usher in an age of sexual repression. On the contrary, by the nineteenth century sexual behaviours which had always been punishable began to be spoken of, regulated, and policed in new ways.

Chapter One ‘Harlots, witches and bar-maids’

Prostitution, disease, and the state, 1497–1800

DOI: 10.4324/9780203104057-3

The history of venereal diseases presents a challenging medico-social problem and many questions regarding the genesis of the disease remain unanswered. ¹ There are two main schools of thought on the origin of syphilis in Europe: the Unionist and the Columbian. Unionists argue that it was a mutant form of an old disease which suddenly became more virulent as a result of changing social conditions, living habits, or climate. Columbians, on the other hand, claim that syphilis was a new disease brought to Europe by Columbus and his men upon their return from the Americas in 1493. A lesser known school of thought, the astrological school, was founded by Peter Pinctor in 1500. Pinctor demonstrated the precise date and time of the emergence of the disease astrologically, to the satisfaction of himself and other astrological physicians of the day. He proved that the ‘new scourge’ first appeared with the conjunction of Venus with Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury in October 1493. ² Whichever school one follows, the deadly effects and the inability to treat the new disease is well documented.

The first appearance of syphilis in Scotland is less controversial. The first recorded cases coincided with the arrival of Perkin War-beck, masquerading as the Duke of York, the younger of the two princes who was murdered in the Tower of London. Warbeck sought the help of King James IV and through his support he was able to invade England in 1460. His motley band of foreign mercenaries, numbering 1,400, was described as ‘thieves, robbers and vagabonds’, who desired ‘only to live off robbery and raping’. ³ Historians suggest that Warbeck’s soldiers, many of whom resided in Aberdeen between 1495 and 1497, brought the first recorded cases of syphilis to Scotland. During this time the first attempts to control ‘glengore’ or ‘grandgore’, common Scottish names for syphilis, were incorporated in two edicts: the Edict of the Town Council of Aberdeen, dated 21 April 1497, and the Statute of the Privy Council of Scotland, dated 22 September 1497. ⁴ These attempts to control syphilis are among the first experiments in Scottish social medicine. The legislation, however, took the form of forcible isolation and harsh repression and there is little evidence of any constructive attempt to establish causes or cures, or to remove the conditions responsible for its spread. ⁵

Although the connection between syphilis and sexual intercourse was not made until the next century, early legislation was based on a double standard which contained a moral bias against women. The engineers of the Aberdeen Act were quick to accuse ‘licht weman’ of spreading the disease, and readily put their opinions into action. ⁶ The Act demanded that ‘all light [loose] women … dicist from thair vices and syne of venerie’ and work for ‘thair support on pain of being branded’ or banished from the town. ⁷ Apart from its being the earliest political notice of syphilis in Scotland, this edict is of interest in that before 1500 no medical authority had ever hinted that it had any connection with the ‘syne of venerie’. ⁸ This does not necessarily mean that Aberdeen medical men were more astute, it may just mean that they were eager to blame women for spreading a disease that was little understood and greatly feared. What is clear, however, is that the attempt to control the spread of contagious diseases among the general population by controlling women’s activities was by no means an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century phenomenon. It is difficult to determine whether authorities perceived the real problem to be the sexual promiscuity of Scottish women or fear of syphilis, but it is evident that the link between women and dangerous diseases was established long before it was proven that the disease was communicated through sexual intercourse. In fact, until the sixteenth century it was believed that syphilis spread via contact with clothes, personal possessions, baths, kissing, and especially breath. ⁹

The Statute of the Privy Council issued in Edinburgh was far more detailed, having been drawn up by King James IV himself, who took a personal interest in this new disease, partly because he was a student of the medical arts and a lay-practitioner of leechcraft. The King ordered the transportation of all infected individuals to the Island of Ichkeith where they were to be treated. ¹⁰ The edict, known as the Glengore Act, also contained an open invitation to anyone who could cure the disease: interested applicants were to be deported also. The whole operation was to be completed within two days, after which the cheeks of the ‘uncured’ were branded before they were banished so that they would be easily recognized if they dared to return. ¹¹ This edict reflects the belief that the disease could be communicated by air (miasma) as well as via third parties. Edinburgh authorities were anxious about the health of medical attendants who undertook to cure the infected. In order to make them easily identifiable they decreed that physicians who worked with the disease should be branded with a ‘marking irne’. ¹² This attitude should explain why little headway was made in finding a cure until well into the nineteenth century. The more respectable members of the medical profession refused to work with venereal patients, so sufferers were left to the ‘mercies of barbers, quacks and old women’. ¹³

In 1507, two additional edicts were passed in Aberdeen. They, too, demonstrate the fear that the disease was passed by air. The first attempted to quarantine syphilitics by confining them to their homes, and the second banned them from entering the vicinity of butchers, bakers, brewers, and launderies. ¹⁴ In 1549, a special meeting of the provincial council of the Scottish clergy was held to inquire into the sexual incontinence of ecclesiastics and an edict was passed by the Edinburgh Synod to protect themselves against syphilis. It exhorted the clergy to keep away from their illegitimate children, prohibited their promotion in the church, and forbade their endowment with dowries or property out of the church’s property. ¹⁵

Throughout the remainder of the century efforts to control epidemics of syphilis failed. Public notices of its presence continually appeared at different times in various cities and districts, notably Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling, Linlithgow, and Ayrshire. ¹⁶ By 1560, the authorities shifted their attention toward experiments in preventive medicine. In Edinburgh, an Act was passed which gave uninfected ‘whoremasters and harlots’ two alternatives: either confess their conversion to a new way of life or face penalties, depending on the number of previous arrests, ranging from public rebuke and carting to branding and banishment or torture and death. The segregation of syphilitics was confined to women only, as the Act directed that all ‘whores’, whether infected or not, were to be banished from the town and suburbs. ¹⁷ There was, however, no mention of punishment for the men who frequented these women. In 1561, for example, an order was passed by the Council commanding Lady Jane Stonehouse to remove herself from the ‘toune’ on account of her indecent behaviour. This order is notable considering the rank of the person against whom it was issued. ¹⁸

Between 1561 and 1566 there were at least seven other similar enactments issued by the magistrates and councils. Queen Mary herself issued an Act ‘to punish committers of fornication’. This is not surprising in view of the fact that medical archaeologists maintain that Mary’s second husband, Lord Darnley, and probably her third, Bothwell, had syphilis. ¹⁹ The Queen also questioned the health of the high church dignitary who was appointed to baptize her son, James. She said that ‘she would not have a pokie priest to spet in her child’s mouth’. ²⁰

By 1587, the persecution of women for sexual behaviour intensified. In Glasgow female chastity was perceived to be so low that the Kirk Session enacted severe disciplinary measures. Punishments depended on the woman’s social rank and the number of past offences. ‘Harlots’ were to be carted through the town, ducked in the Clyde, and put in the juggs ^* on a market day. Female servants were either fined £20 for each breach of chastity or sentenced to eight days in prison, where they were fed on bread and water, after which they were put in the juggs for a day. ‘Honest men’s daughters’ were also included, but their fines depended on the discretion of the Kirk. ²¹

* The juggs (jougs) were an instrument of punishment similar to the pillory; the criminal was fastened to the wall or a post by an iron collar around the neck.

In 1591, a year of escalated persecution of witches, fear of venereal disease was so intense and the public so wrathful that in cases where witchcraft and syphilis were linked, condemned women were not strangled before burning as usual, but were burned alive. One case in which the ‘disease’ is alluded to is the trial of a lady of wealth and station, Euphame Macalzane. The daughter of Lord Clifton, she was taken to Castel-Hill in Edinburgh and burned at the stake. ²²

By the sixteenth century magistrates appear to have made a connection between the evils of sex, women, and alcohol. In 1580 ‘A Most Strict Proclamation’ was issued against female servants in taverns, ‘because of fornication and filthiness that is committed by them, as the occasion of intissing youth.’

... in past times the iniquity of women taverners in this burgh [Edinburgh] has been a great occasion of whoredom, insomuch that there appears to be a brothel in every tavern; therefore all vintners of wine may engage women taverners before the next Martinmas hereafter were to be certified, that if their women committed any immoral fault they should have to pay £40, except if they deliver the offender into the hands of the bailie, to be banished, according to the law, as soon as the offence comes to their knowledge. ²³

The fine remained at £40 until 1699, when it was raised to £100 scots. and the Town Council urged churchmen to police their respective parishes regularly so that they might discover ‘guilty’ female servants and punish them accordingly. ²⁴

Only two additional Acts relating to prostitution were passed between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Scotland. The first, in 1650, prohibited brothel-keeping and ordered the guilty to be ‘carted and scourged for their vileness, and banished … under pain of shame [and] disgrace’. In the second, an army officer was dismissed for keeping a ‘whore’. ²⁵

There is every reason to believe that the brutal sentences contained in the various Acts were carried out, though, fortunately for the ‘guilty’, historians claim that they often f...