Regulating Parisian Street Prostitutes
The city administrators of nineteenth-century Paris redefined the common prostitute from a societal outcast to a public health concern. In 1802, in order to control this necessary evil, the city began instituting regulations and mandatory venereal examinations for those who identified as prostitutes. Therefore, in the name of disease control, the police were able to obtain an inscription list of all Parisian sex workers. This legalized system of tolerance had negative repercussions for the women it claimed to aid; women were allowed to engage in sex work so long as they obeyed scrupulous guidelines, with deviance from these rules resulting in one of several punishments, often without a trial. (1) By requiring prostitutes to register their status as separate and distinct from their female contemporaries, these regulations presented a legal handicap barring their social mobility.
In addition to the legal marker, certain physical signifiers distinguished Parisian prostitutes from other women, in turn contributing to social stigma and aiding law enforcement in their detection. Period art pieces contain standard allusions to prostitution in the subtle manner of a subject’s posing or expression. Giovanni Boldini’s Crossing the Road is an example of such a piece, depicting a young woman’s purposefully exposed ankle in a crowded street, as she bares a soft smile and an armful of flowers. (2) The development and proliferation of this imagery into the common prostitute-stereotype aided law enforcement in isolating sex workers from other women. As the expectations for a prostitute’s physical presentation became standardized, the ability to visually identify a prostitute allowed for detection by city administrators and served as an indicator of their societal positioning.
The effects of these methods of detection were heightened given that the rules governing registered prostitutes extended beyond the limits of sex work. In an effort “to gain control of the grave disturbances caused on the public roads by the street girls”, regulations were administered in an attempt to limit these women’s visibility in public spaces. (3) Prostitutes were forbidden from being “stationed on the public road, [forming] groups there, or [circulating] in a meeting there”, regardless of whether or not they were soliciting clients. (3) Taken from an 1830 Police Prefecture, the ambiguity of the articles allowed for an officer’s discrimination on a case by case basis, given that street girls were “forbidden from doing anything that would cause debauchery”. (3) In this way, a registered prostitute was barred from physical and social mobility, given her classification as such in the public sphere presented limitations on where she could be, when she could be, and with whom she could be.
Sources
1. Harsin, Jill. Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-century Paris. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
2. "Ambiguity. Walking streets in public space." Musée D'Orsay:. September 2015. Accessed May 01, 2016. http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/events/exhibitions/in-the-musee-dorsay/exhibitions-in-the-musee-dorsay-more/page/1/article/splendeurs-et-miseres-42671.html?tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=254&cHash=fbc7d6cc23
3. Translation by Peri Leavitt '19, FREN 3011 2016.