The history of prostitution : its extent, causes and effects throughout the world / by William W. Sanger ; with numerous editorial notes and an appendix.

  • William Wallace Sanger
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The history of prostitution : its extent, causes and effects throughout the world / by William W. Sanger ; with numerous editorial notes and an appendix. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    inteliigent as any on tke Western continent, who have been for years suffering from the effects of a vice in purse and person ; who have paid and are paying every year large sums of money oil account of it; who witness every day some broken constitu- tion or ruined character resulting from it, and who yet have nev- er thought of seeking out the cause! Is it now too late to enlist your sympathies in the undertaking ? Hence we conclude that propriety, expediency, public safety, private interest, and common sense demand an investigation like this now submitted to the reader. And what is the argument brought forward to oppose it? The world’s scorn—“this scorn being only a sort of tinseled cloak to its deformed weakness.” But is not this scorn powerless against the array of favoring mo- tives ? Will it stand the test of comparison with any one of them, much less of all ? Is not its influence lost when its real character is known? The reckless carelessness which has suffered a grow- ing vice to increase and multiply, which has permitted a deadly Upas-tree to take root and blossom in the community until its poisonous exhalations threaten universal infection; which has, by its actual indifference, fostered vice, promoted seduction, perpet- uated disease, and entailed death; shall this deformed weakness now raise its trembling hands, and exhibit its tottering frame, and lift its puny voice to forbid an examination into the sources of the danger ? Has not the finger of this scorn too long forbid the search for truth ? Has not the hour arrived when truth will speak trumpet-tongued, and when her voice must be heard? Now the question will arise. Has the world’s indifference pro- duced these evils? Undoubtedly it has, and in the following manner: Laws have been placed upon the statute-book declaring ]wostitutes, and houses of prostitution, and all who live by such means, illegal and immoral. There the law yet stands. At un- certain intervals some poor and friendless woman is arrested as a vagrant, and, to appease the offended majesty of law, she is sent to })rison, a scapegoat for five thousand of her class. It also some- times happens that another woman equally guilty, but with mone}^ or influence, is arrested at the same time and for the same offense, and before she reaches the prison walls a legal quibble has been raised and she is free. Is there no culpable indifference in this? Houses of prostitution are proscribed by law. How manv of them are ever indicted, or, if indicted, how many are suppressed ? This, too, is owing to criminal neglect, and it is aggravated by the in-
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