Tolerance in 19th Century Paris: Maisons Tolerées

El Salón de la Rue des Moulins, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1894, Musée Toulouse-Lautrec.

Alexandre Parent du Châtelet’s Prostitution in Paris focuses on maisons tolerées in chapter 4, titled “General Remarks on Houses of Prostitution.” Du Châtelet explores the problems associated with these houses, as well as the municipality’s reasoning behind tolerance and the benefits it provides to the community and to a lesser extent, the women.

Principal Conditions of the Houses

Du Châtelet begins the chapter with the following introduction:

The police finding it impossible to prevent the existence of houses of debauchery, felt themselves obliged, not to authorize them, which it never did, but to tolerate them. In this chapter I shall mention the measures taken by the government to diminish their inconveniences, and to deserve by their cares and watchfulness, the gratitude of population.[1]

He follows this introduction with a discussion on “particular names applied to these houses at different times,” explaining in the century before his writing, the most popularly used names were public places/houses and bad places but the “present administration, still more reserved, use the expression maisons tolerées, tolerated houses, for it never authorizes them positively, which would be contrary to the rules and laws which regulate this mater.”[2] 

Having made clear the official attitude authorities had towards these houses, du Châtelet continues, describing the principal conditions required of them. Generally, he explains, two or more tolerated houses should not have the same entrance or staircase because experience has made clear that this causes rivalry.[3] Each woman should have a room unto herself (free of dark rooms or closets in which someone could hide [this notion is reminiscent of Kelly’s discussion of the visibility of the Zone, see exhibit page Zona Galáctica]), and these rooms and the women’s clothing should be kept clean. In addition, shops should not be admitted in the houses as they cause disorder (“[…] intolerable to a man of reserve and modesty […]”) and require police surveillance: “[…] the girls in them do all they can to attract attention: they frequently leave their curtains open, which is forbidden by law, and sometimes the curtain material is so thin as to be perfectly transparent. Some of them stand at the doors to be seen by the passers-by, at every hour of the day.” [4]

Rue des Moulins, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1894, National Gallery of Art.

Geography of the Houses

In terms of streets in which the maisons tolerées may exist, du Châtelet explains that “narrow and obscure” streets are generally not well suited because they attract crime.[5] The ideal situation he suggests are the following:

There are small streets at Paris, known for a long time as places of prostitution which lead nowhere, in which no one enters except by design, which a stranger to the city and to the quarter would never enter to shorten his walk, and which are found in finely built quarters – in these streets the administration never refuses a tolerance, happy to conceal in these places the abodes of vice which embarrass it […].[6]

It is clear from this discussion that the Paris police and the vocal community population would prefer tolerated houses to be out of eyesight, in known places that are not considered upstanding so that they do not further taint their surroundings.

 After this discussion, however, du Châtelet addresses the necessary question of “can and ought Courtesans to be confined to certain streets of a city?” [7] He reiterates that policies of toleration emerge from an understanding that prostitution cannot be “destroyed.” He describes St. Louis’ attempt to assign prostitutes to certain streets, forbidding them from going elsewhere, a largely failed effort that contributes to his conclusion that confining prostitutes to a certain area of the city is impossible. He concludes, “If it is for the interest of the sanitary surveillance and also for that of public order to prevent clandestine prostitution, this must be made unprofitable for those who pursue it. The prostitutes can not be made to disappear by destroying the tolerated house of prostitution in a section of city; this course only aggravates clandestine prostitution.”[8]

Du Châtelet’s section on maisons tolerées provides a look at the approach of tolerance towards prostitution in 19^th century Paris. Officials who recognized the impracticality of attempts to end prostitution turned to tolerance as a means of controlling an “unavoidable evil.” The rules and regulations they imposed upon these houses were in the name of preventing disorder and protecting the public rather than a genuine concern for the women. The next three exhibit pages will examine several contemporary examples of tolerance in Mexico, Belgium, England and Wales and the remarkable similarities to the maisons tolerées explored here.