"Seeing Prostitutes Everywhere"
The police des moeurs, or moral police, were the administrative force chiefly concerned with the regulation of prostitution. They accomplished this through the maintenance of an inscription list of all filles publiques, or public women. Women would be registered with the police either voluntarily, or upon an arrest for prostitution. Knowing that registration would not be totally voluntary due to the special rules with which it burdened registered prostitutes, the police de moeurs retained the authority to register women “by office,” on the grounds that sufficient presumption of prostitution existed in the eyes of the prefecture.
Of particular concern to police were fille insoumises, or clandestine women. Insoumises were prostitutes whom had not registered with the police. In the early years of enforcement, these represented the primary targets of enforcement. Nearly every citizen of Paris had witnessed a razzia or rafle. These late night raids, emblematic of the legal approach to prostitution in 19th century Paris, entailed the police des moeurs blocking off the thoroughfares on either side of a boulevard, and rounding up all the women found on the street within. These women would then be registered by office. These were, more often than not, working class women, rendered powerless to resist an unjust arrest and registration by their lack of economic power and their legal invisibility.[1]
The perception of prostitution being everywhere was certainly present in the minds of the gentry: Pictured above and left is a letter from a member of the public to the prefect of police, describing the citizen's outrage at encountering "prostitutes on every street - who 'assisted' every man who passed by them." The citizen states that he was walking with two young women, and reminds the police of the "gruesome impact" the visibility of street prostitution has on young girls.[2] It is unclear was part of the presence of lower-class women it was that impacted young girls so gruesomely.
The moral panic generated by claims of vulnerability of young women seems to have engendered a culture of repression towards prostitution in Paris, as police took increasingly greater liberties. The rafle was far from the only application of registration by office: any woman engaging in “irregular conduct” could be registered by office at the discretion of any member of the police de moeurs, granting the police free license to subject women to the special regulations governing prostitutes. Before long, any woman of low social class could very easily fall under suspicion of being a femme insoumise.[3] Without any oversight, or legal representation, the police de moeurs created an increasingly wide set of criterion for determining whether a woman might be subject to registration by office.
An 1843 regulation regarding the process of arresting an insoumise required that women found on the street must be followed into a house of prostitution before they could be arrested. In practice, the police found many other reasons to arrest women for prostitution. Women might be arrested for a oeillade, a provocative look, or geste lascif, an obscene gesture - both at the whim of an arresting officer. These women would be subject to administrative detention, a euphemism for detention without trial. Officers were also enabled to arrest women caught leaving a house of a known prostitute, and women caught walking with known prostitutes.[4] It is apparent here that socialization with prostitutes implies guilt by association, segregating prostitutes from those of higher social rank.
Even if none of the above scenarios occurred, a woman could be arrested for suspicious behavior if an officer believed her to be a prostitute after “prolonged surveillance,” for which no guidelines were given. Similarly, if a woman living in a lodging house “with a bad reputation” were accused of being a prostitute, officers were instructed to question her neighbors as to her habits, and often arrested the women – sometimes entirely without basis. Jill Harsin notes astutely that lodging houses rented furnished rooms for a short term, attracting migrant workers, malfaiteurs, and “those too poor to afford something more permanent- and by prostitutes, who often fit all of these categories.[5] It is significant that living among the lower social class granted additional authorization for surveillance to the police, and lowered the burden of proof.
The police also maintained a practice of raiding lodging houses late at night without warning or warrant. Little regard was given for the privacy of the women encountered during these raids, as they were made to get out of bed, dress, present their identification, and answer a line of questioning. This practice led to one of the very rare complaints of excessive force from the time, brought by a domestic servant named Victoire Choublis, who reported that she had been “surprised in bed by a group of officers who had searched her, and then forced her to dress in front of them.[6]
All of this outrage seems especially ironic when taken in light of the realities of the time. Pictured left is an internal memo from a police commissioner to the prefect, stating that having investigated citizens' reports of rampant street walking prostitution, the police investigators found that reports of prostitution were largely exaggerated. [7]