Then: Health Center as Locus for Social Control

Health Center as Locus for Social Control

There is much evidence that the health clinic or dispensary served as a locus for social control in 19th century France – the health clinic not only controlled prostitute’s health as but also controlled non-health related issues, functioning much like a prison. One Police document taken from the archives recounts how 20 madames were arrested for driving with their carriages open as opposed to closed, as is mandated. Instead of being called into the police station, however, they were bizarrely taken to the health clinic, “Twenty in total, Madames of the Banlieue and surrounding neighborhoods have been called into the health clinics and they have been notified of the new obligations that have been imposed, they are not to break the law for a period of 20 days.”[1] Symbolically the crime of madames driving with their carriage open is now turned into a health problem. Obviously, this crime is not essentially health-related; however now the public display of prostitutes can be viewed as a health problem. According to this logic, prostitutes flaunting themselves can be viewed as a danger to public health and safety. Finally, this makes health clinics a locus for punishment and not for healing, which has negative consequences.

Reform/Lock Hospitals

During the 19^th century, there were hospitals designated soley for prostitutes. The 1857 edition of “De la Prostitution de la Ville de Paris” described these hospitals: “The treatment of veneral disease is centralized today in some special hospitals which are 1) Saint-Lazarre for prostitutes 2)The Lourcine Hospital for women said to be civil; The Midi Hospital for men; 4) The Health house and other establishments.”[2] One’s identity dictated which hospital one was sent to, with a separate hospital for prostitutes and “civil” women. The Saint Lazarre hospital for prostitutes housed a population of 1,300, and was “placed under the administration of the Prefecture of police.”[3] Inside this hospital the prostitutes were detained. In this way the hospital functioned much like a prison—prostitutes would be captured by either the police or detained by the monthly medical health examiners and sent to Saint Lazarre, this prostitute-only hospital. They would then be under supervision of not only the medical doctors who did not hold prostitutes in high esteem, but also the prefecture of police.   

Parent-du-Châtelet Critique of Lock Hospitals

Parent-Du-Châtelet emphasized the importance of keeping prisons and hospitals separate, as the nature of disease and crime are much different. du-Châtelet writes,

It would go against all just rules of good administration, to put prostitutes under the same roof and to submit prostitutes to the same regimen, two establishment as different as a hospital and a prison, it would be to assimilate an illness independent of the person, due to the exercise of their work, and contracted against their will, at infringements of the rules and at most reprehensible actions, and which deserve the most grave punishments.[4]

Du-Châtelet not only emphasized the differences between hospitals and prisons, but argued that venereal disease is not the prostitutes fault and she should not be punished for it. Venereal disease is simply a work hazard. Furthermore du-Châtelet emphasizes how prisons and hospitals are created with different aims, with prisons created to inspire fear and hospitals created to heal. He writes “that it is in the interest of the customs and of public health in general, that prostitutes fear prison, the only manner of punishing them, and that they enter the hospital without reluctance and even with pleasure.”[5] While prisons are indeed intended to inspire fear, hospitals should inspire pleasure. In order for hospitals to be viewed less negatively, du-Châtelet maintains that prostitutes should not be “detained”, as in prisons, but instead “bordered,” until they get better. He writes:

That prostitutes with venereal infections, are not sent or retained in a hospice, neither for misdemeanors, nor even for infringements of the rules concerned with them; but only to be there treated; that they are not there detained, but simply boarded just until they recover, like that practiced in other hospitals, for illnesses less dangerous to society than that which concerns them.[6]

Du-Châtelet maintains that prostitutes with venereal disease be treated just like non-prostitutes with other illnesses. Due to this, he argues that the prostitute-only hospitals should be modeled after the “regular” hospitals. These critiques are well taken and offer a progressive criticism of lock-hospitals. In showing how du-Châtelet criticized these lock hospitals, I hope to show how public discourses surrounding the social control of prostitutes are not as hegemonic as they might first appear; while the police certainly enacted control over the prostitutes, there were visible challenges to their regime.

What this Mechanism Achieves

It can be argued that the health center is a more compassionate, less regulatory site for the regulation of prostitution. In creating the health center as the locus for regulation, prostitutes may be treated more personally and less as objects of control. One police documents states that the police are too heavy handed in the regulation of prostitutes. The health center employees, instead, know the prostitutes personally. Because of this, they can better discern which prostitutes are unruly and which are not. If a prostitute is known to be unruly they would be able to control and regulate her, if a prostitute is not they would simply be able to give her care and treatment. The document reads: “There is no doubt [sic] that there are more rebellious women who walk the streets but this police surveillance could not be exercised with the care and the steadfastness as that of used by active inspectors from the clinic that know which women are which.”[7] In many ways this can be seen as a step towards care that is more compassionate and is based more on interpersonal, rather than state-based action.

What this Mechanism does not Achieve

The use of the health clinic as a locus of discipline symbolically constructs non-health related infractions, such as public display of prostitutes, etc., into health related infractions. Furthermore, this turns the heath clinic, a place where healing is suppose to occur, into a place where one is penalized.  While it is impossible to know, it is easy to assume that this would construct the health center as a negative place for the prostitutes. This would in turn discourage health checkups – if the health center were viewed negatively, as a disciplinary institution intended to control, then prostitutes would not be keen to get proper medical treatment.