1 The Madonna and the Whore: The Victorian ... - Lourdes College

The Madonna and the Whore:
The Victorian Wife and the Victorian Prostitute, a Collision of Virtue and Vice
By Patti Coressel
© Patti Coressel, 2011
Patti Coressel was a History and English major who graduated from Lourdes College
in May 2010. She plans to pursue graduate studies in the future.
The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain brought monumental changes to the country.
The shift from the rural, feudal existence of the centuries before to a consumer driven economy,
based on capitalism and mass production affected the lives of every inhabitant of England.
London from 1840 to 1880 perfectly reflected British industrial might at its height. In London,
the population climbed to over two million, when just 50 years before, it had only around
800,000 inhabitants. 1 The incessant growth of industry combined with a steadily climbing
population, created deeper divisions between the working and middle classes than ever before. In
fact, the shock of this rapid growth essentially forced the city of London to divide into two
distinct economic camps: the affluent and the poverty-stricken. The city became a study in
duality, both in its public and private spheres.
The dichotomy between the rich and the poor can be traced through every aspect of life in
Victorian London. The super-rich lived at the top, nearly untouched by the unwashed masses,
while the middle-class, who tried to emulate the aristocracy were unavoidably intertwined with
the working poor through commerce and proximity. The luxurious, relative comfort of the
middle class is equally squalid and uncomfortable for the poor. Plagued by disease and poverty,
the socioeconomically disadvantaged half of the city struggled daily to survive, the beasts of
burden for the well-to-do. They were their servants and employees, their shoe shines,
seamstresses, hatters and washer-women. Overcrowding, disease, crime and filth were the order
of the day for the working class. Long work days, child labor, prostitution and drinking houses
1

decayed the family dynamic in slums like the East End, creating an almost palpable sense of
desperation and despair, both in the health and the morality of those forced to live the pitiful life
of the urban poor. The sheer proliferation of poverty in London caused a disparity in the
population, as the poor outnumbered the middle-class nearly 3 to 1. 2 All of their labor, struggle,
life and death were engineered to accommodate the unheard of luxury in which the well-to-do
lived.
In between the rich and the poor lived the middle class. They tried their best to emulate
the ruling class even as their lives were intertwined by commerce and anxiety with the working
poor. Life for the middle-class was much more comfortable than it was for the poor. If a man’s
home is his castle, the middle-class Victorian home was the first instance in which a hard
working man could feel like the aristocrat he so desperately tried to emulate. Filled with the
fruits of the worker’s labor, the domain of the middle-class was a sanctuary from the hard world
of the poor that lurked outside their front door. They enjoyed running water, warm rooms, and
later in the century, electricity. The beautifully appointed homes were scrubbed clean by
servants and their wives wore the latest fashions. Sufficient food and regular healthcare
expanded the life expectancy of the middle-class population and decreased the rate of infant
mortality. Their children were literate and finely dressed. Their wives obedient and
domestically inclined. Their social calendars filled with parties, opera and trips to the theater.
Ensconced in their elegant townhomes, the financially solvent could nurture their family
relationships, reflect on their moral superiority, and engage in social the ladder climbing that
became the obsession of the Victorian middle-class.
In no other sphere was this duality between the well-off and the underclass more apparent
than in the many “Fallen Women” who became prostitutes in London versus the virtuous wives
2

who modeled themselves after the ultimate of ideal womanhood, Queen Victoria. Each was the
epitome of their social class, one representing the degradation and desperation of poor women
with few financial options, the other, shining examples of the virtuous morality that is often the
privilege of the well-fed and financially secure. Life for all of these women were not easy; the
roles they played in the new industrial society were created to support and sustain the highly
driven and ambitious Victorian Male. To understand the motivations of each of these women is
vital in the study of their coming together. The blending of sinfulness and purity, vice and virtue,
desire and repression work together to create an interesting dichotomy. An examination of the
prostitute and the wife of Victorian London clearly shows how each had a vital and necessary
function in facilitating the patriarchal ideal of Victorian England and allowing it to persist in
their time. Neither was truly whole, neither is truly autonomous, and neither was ever happily set
in their role.
For the morally upright Victorians, prostitutes were the example of loose morality and
weakness, the harlot who succumbs to temptation. They were the manifestation of the ravages of
poverty and passion, the two things that well-to-do Victorians abhorred. Unfortunately, many
women took to the streets to escape the crushing effects of poverty brought on by the shocking
dislocation of the Industrial Revolution. To understand the motivations of the women who chose
prostitution, we must gain a better understanding of what life was like for the poor. Crowded
accommodations with an entire family sharing one room introduced poor children to the realities
of life very early. In his book The Victorian Underworld, Kellow Chesney gives a graphic
description of the conditions in which many were living. “Hideous slums, some of them acres
wide, some no more than crannies of obscure misery, make up a substantial part of the
metropolis. In big, once handsome houses, thirty or more people of all ages may inhabit a single
3

oom.” 3 Life, death, and carnal knowledge were all well known in these cramped and squalid
quarters. Lack of money and food forced young children into the streets to beg or procure work
in any way, not allowing any time for scholarly pursuits, their only education in the hunger and
hopelessness of abject poverty.
For women particularly, this life was hard, since the jobs generally allotted to them was
limited, the work days long, and the pay was considerably less than their working class male
counterparts. The combined responsibilities of child-rearing, house cleaning, and long days at a
thankless and dangerous job made life for the working women of Victorian England extremely
exhausting and difficult. A poor woman searching for work in Victorian London could not
expect the job market to be a varied and lucrative endeavor. The most common vocation of
employed poor women was in domestic service maintaining the beautiful homes of the middle-
class. In 1870, around 60 percent of the working women in London belonged in one way or
another in this line of work. 4 These jobs were extremely low paying, and the long and
demanding hours required of a domestic allowed for little personal time. After domestic work,
the clothing industry was the second largest employer of women. It encompassed a wide range
of different workers including dressmakers, shirt-makers, makers of underclothing, milliners,
hatters, glovers, hosiers, straw bonnet makers, collar-makers, tailors, pattern-makers and shoe
and boot makers. 5
Employment in an early Industrial Revolution factory was an experiment in terror. Long
hours combined with low pay and unsafe working conditions lowered the life expectancy of the
women employed in them. Many occupations often used dangerous methods such as the mercury
in hat factories that commonly poisoned workers, a disorder that with prolonged exposure,
eventually led to madness. 6 These jobs were extremely low paying, women and children
4

working for half of the wages that men made. The inability to subsist on these meager wages,
combined with the deplorable living conditions of the urban poor, allowed little choice for
women who belonged to the lower classes. The only profitable alternative these hungry desperate
women did have was prostitution.
Approximately 5 percent of London’s female work force in 1865 were prostitutes. 7 The
women who entered this line of work had often worked a legitimate wage-based job before
entering into prostitution. Statistics concerning prostitutes in London vary greatly. According to
the police, in 1851, there were around 7,000 known prostitutes in London, while the Society for
the Suppression of Vice puts the number at around 80,000. In her book Prostitution and
Victorian Society, Judith Walkowitz asserts that for every 36 inhabitants in London, there was 1
prostitute. That is one prostitute for every 12 Victorian gentlemen. 8 This discrepancy is
understandable because the number of prostitutes was constantly fluctuating, depending on
availability of work and the changes in the seasons. The work was also very transitory, most
often a temporary vocation until marriage or the procurement of respectable employment.
The average age of Victorian prostitutes was somewhere between 18 and 22. The age of
consent at the time was 13, but was raised to 16 in 1868, and many continued to work until their
late 20’s. They most often were single women who resided alone in lodgings that they rented
from their income. Some had illegitimate children, who would have most likely been raised by
some sort of foster family that were paid for the raising of their child. The Victorian prostitute,
though living apart from her immediate family, often sent a portion of her income to help feed
and clothe her mother, father, brothers and sisters. 9 Overwhelmingly, prostitutes were the
unskilled daughters of unskilled laborers, and who no formal education. Driven by need and
desperation, young women with no other options took to the streets. The allure of prostitution
5

was an irresistible draw to a poor young girl with few choices in life. In the adoption of this
lucrative vocation, the Victorian prostitute could, for the first time in her life, experience a warm
room, stylish clothing, zero debt and a full stomach.
In a time when the average working wage for a woman was around 12 to 15 shillings a
week, a prostitute could make upwards of 30 shillings per day, the average weekly income of a
working man at the time. 10 Prostitutes had certain advantages over their respectable working-
class sisters. Their newly acquired fiscal freedom allowed for comfortable accommodations,
better food, beautiful clothes and they were less prone to tuberculosis than their fellow lower-
class women. They enjoyed social liberties denied most other women. They were free to
frequent public drinking houses, and often attended the theatre and public events without an
escort, something that an average working class woman and even a middle or upper class woman
could not do. This social autonomy was rare, as honorable women had to be accompanied
constantly while in public. This vocation, while fraught with immorality, disease and social
stigma, offered unrivaled freedom and represented a conscience lifestyle choice on the part of the
prostitute.
In her book, Prostitution and Victorian Society, Judith Walkowitz asserts that prostitution
was often a fiscal choice, rather than the moral failing that the evangelical Victorian moralists
insisted it was. “Most women’s entry into prostitution seemed to be a response to the conditions
of the local urban job market explains Walkowitz, rather than an innocent victim of middle-class
seduction and betrayal, or a child drugged and trapped by white slavers.” 11 In a letter to The
Times, on February 24, 1858, under the heading “The Great Social Evil,” a “fallen woman”
relates her experience as a prostitute as an act of fiscal necessity, not a moral downfall.
“Now commences an important era in my life. I was a fine,
robust, healthy girl, 13 years of age. I had larked with the boys
6

of my own age. I had seen much and heard abundantly of the
mysteries of the sexes. To me such things had been matters of
common sight and common talk. For some time I had coquetted
on the verge of a strong curiosity, and a natural desire. I lost—
what? Not my virtue, for I never had any. Opportunity was not
long wanting to put my newly acquired knowledge to profitable
use. In the commencement of my fifteenth year I thus began my
career as what you better classes call a prostitute. I gained
money, dressed gaily, and have always paid my debts.” 12
As autonomous as the profession was, the life of a Victorian prostitute was not simply an
experience in economic relief, pretty clothes and stimulating society. It was extremely
dangerous and, before the advent of any preventative contraception, pregnancy and the
contraction of disease was almost definite. Syphilis and gonorrhea were prolific, especially in the
prostitutes that catered to soldiers, sailors, and the poor. There were other dangers as well.
There were never enough prostitutes to fill the customer demand, so enterprising men and
women found ways to press women into service. Sometimes, naive young women from the
country arriving in London to find work and opportunity found more than they bargained for.
Some were lured into prostitution by men called “bullies”. Alone, with nowhere to stay and no
chaperone to protect them, these men would offer them a place to sleep and a little money, if
they would just do a little “work”. Even more disturbingly, families sometimes sold their young
daughters into the sex trade to ease their financial burden. Though these horrors existed, the
moralist propaganda that filled newspapers, pamphlets, and the evangelical fervor of ministers at
the pulpit often inflated the numbers and embellished the stories to induce in their readership and
congregations an urgent need to stamp out the blight of prostitution from their city.
Nineteenth-century writers were characteristically melodramatic on the topic of
prostitution and a majority of the extant writings on “The Great Social Evil” and the “Fallen
Women” in Victorian England are a cry for moral reform and the eradication of the plague.
7

Maybe most notable of these treatises on the evils of prostitution was a four-part expose in the
Pall Mall Gazette, beginning on the 4 th of July, 1885 entitled “The Maiden Tribute of Modern
Babylon”. The author W.T. Stead compared London to the Minotaur’s labyrinth, awash with
women sacrificed to the monster of modern society. 13 He warns on the front page of the paper
that “all readers who are squeamish, and all those who are prudish, and all those who prefer to
live in a fool’s paradise of imaginary innocence and purity…will do well not to read the Pall
Mall Gazette of Monday and the following days.” 14 This kind of sensational journalism of
course broke sales records. The Society for the Suppression of Vice was also one of the most
active groups of the time, whose sole ambition was the complete obliteration of any immorality
they came in contact with. Their main tactical approach included fervently raising awareness
and demonization and defamation of prostitutes through aggressive moral rhetoric. Much of
their press asserted that the spread of disease was a punishment for illicit sexual activity and
advocated allowing this divinely ordained plague to wipe out the immoral once and for all. As
the Pall Mall Gazette explained it:
“The miseries which prostitution spreads amongst the sons and
daughters of men are the legitimate results of unholy traffic; the
avenging finger of an offended Deity is plainly visible in them;
to interfere between the evil and its consequences is to come
between Eternal Justice and those who have outraged her laws;
these Sorrows must run their undisturbed course. 15
William Acton, a much more rational observer of the social phenomenon, used his
writings to solemnly warn the upright Victorian population of the stealthy nature of prostitution
and the infiltration of the “fallen woman” into the ranks of the decent citizenry. He also noted
their apparent affluence and warned the socially mobile that, even though prostitutes donned all
the trappings of the middle class, they were simply members of the thousands of poor hungry,
8

unwashed laboring class that the industrial tycoon stepped over in the street on his way home to
his family. Many of his observations had a warning tone, as if reminding the decent to remain
aware of those who walk next to them on the street. As Lord Acton explained
Who are those fair creatures, neither chaperones or chaperoned:
“those somebodies whom nobody knows,” who elbow our wives
and daughters in the parks and the promenades. Who are those
painted, dressy women flaunting along the streets and boldly
accosting the passerby? Only moments before finding this
occupation of harlotry they were one of the miserable creatures.
Ill-fed, ill-clothed, and uncared for, from whose misery the eye
recoils, cowered under dark arches and among the by-lanes. 16
All manner of propaganda was pumped into the mainstream continuously between 1850
and 1880. The average prostitute, however, probably was not too concerned with these wildly
inaccurate and outrageous depictions of her. Whether a wanton temptress who succumbed to
sexual depravity, the kidnapped white slave of a bully, or a woman who has chosen the lifestyle
she leads, the Victorian prostitute knew something that the average, morally upright Victorian
refused to believe. She knew that, despite all the controversy surrounding her, she was simply a
human being trying desperately to survive in the hostile environment that those who criticized
her had made. She walked the streets, selling her body to eat, a cog in the wheel of the proud and
ambitious society that her persecutors had built for her.
All across London on the morning of July 4, 1885, in the fine homes of the more affluent
sections of the city, Victorian wives waited for their husbands to leave for work in the city.
When their dark-suited providers turned the corner, or boarded the omnibus, they tentatively
unfolded copies of the Pall Mall Gazette in their morning rooms, parlors, and sitting rooms,
peered cautiously into the pages, and read with guilty pleasure the first installment of “The
Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon,” blushing at the profanity contained within it. For these
pampered and protected women, the desperate situation of the poor and the prostitutes was a
9

world they could not understand. The depraved immorality that lurked outside their front door
rarely interrupted the domestic tranquility provided for them by their enterprising and successful
husbands.
As every depiction of the role of Victorian wives is explained through the needs of her
husband and children, it is difficult to find any evidence that is not filtered through this
patriarchal lens. The woman as an individual was lost to a constructed life of morality, purity,
and devotion. A middle-class Victorian wife was expected to always maintain the human
manifestation of genteel female perfection. The image of womanly virtue flawlessly embodied
in the royal person of Queen Victoria was the ultimate goal for the female population of
Victorian England. She created, through her public example, a unique “Cult of Domesticity” that
centered on marriage, family, motherhood, and respectability for her female subjects, while
simultaneously providing for the male population a lesson in ambition, expansion, and British
industrial might. Once again the country was split in two, this time due to gender rather that
socioeconomic standing. For men, the world opened up with the promise of wealth, success, and
acclaim. For women, however, the opposite was true. Opportunities narrowed and they were
relegated to a more submissive role, becoming the mistress of the house, responsible for the
creation of the domestic foundation of this new commerce-driven civilization. This inevitably
led to a complete separation of the sexes; that of the public, male dominated outside world and
the private, moralistic feminine inner sanctum of the home.
Victoria’s queenly example, though potent, was not the singular factor responsible for
the separation of the male and female spheres of existence. As industrialization shifted work
from inside the home to massive factories and corporate offices, men left home to work in the
cities, becoming the public face of the family and the sole provider of income. 17 While they
10

toiled all day in the brutally competitive outside world, their wives remained at home, the
compass of morality and stability that would guide their husband home to the private sphere of
hearth and family. She was ever the domestic angel who exemplified femininity, morality, and
maternal longing. It was believed that the greatest accomplishment for a woman was the
fulfillment of her biological destiny, to become a wife and mother, and to defer to her husband in
all matters, no matter what her qualifications and aptitudes. From childhood, young middle class
Victorian girls were laboriously trained in the attainment of that destiny. As they had no legal
rights, they were essentially owned by their fathers, and after marriage, their husbands. It was not
illegal for wives to be beaten, and until 1887, they had no rights to divorce or the custody of their
children. 18
A proper young woman also possessed little knowledge of sexuality. She was brought up
to be completely innocent and sexually ignorant. Influential writers of the time, such as John
Stuart Mill, asserted that women had no sexual feelings at all, and that women fell into two
categories, the virtuous, virginal lady, and the wanton temptress. 19 It was essential that a young
lady be brought up to understand that, above all else, the happiness and comfort of her future
husband and children was central to her existence. All of her education was to bring out her
natural submission to authority and innate maternal instincts. Young ladies were trained to have
no opinions lest they seemed too formed and definite for a young man’s taste. 20 Sarah Stickney
Ellis, an extremely popular writer of women’s etiquette and advice books in the 1850s, gave her
young readers this education in the art of submissiveness:
“It is quite possible you may have more talent than your
husband, with higher attainments, and you may also have been
generally more admired; but this has nothing whatever to do
with your position as a woman, which is, and must be, inferior
to him as a man.” 21
11

A man’s successes were measured by the wages he provided for the family and the
lifestyle those wages provided. The success of wives depended upon the skillful application of
her husband’s financial gains to create a warm, comfortable, and impeccably managed
household, to maintain her beautiful appearance, and to raise well-behaved and industrious
children. Her domestic astuteness was a direct reflection of her husband’s successes, and
therefore must be attended to meticulously, as not to sully his good name in the public world he
inhabited that she only occasionally got to visit. The home, for the man who spent the day out in
the city working, was a refuge. It became a place apart from the sordid aspects of commercial
life, with different morals, different rules, and different guidelines to protect the soul from being
consumed by commerce. Men, however, often didn’t think about the importance of the role of
the wife in his home, and thought of them simply as an extension of his household surroundings.
One Victorian man, while writing to his brother expressed this idea rather succinctly: “of course
at a certain age, when you have a house and so on, you get a wife as part of its furniture.” 22 .
Little did he know the hard work it took for his enterprising wife to maintain this refuge.
Numerous women’s books and magazines expressed the importance of this new role for
women. The quintessential handbook for the Victorian domestic engineer was by far Mrs.
Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Published in 1861, it sold 60,000 copies in the first
year, and over two million copies by 1868, remaining a bestseller for 50 years. Often, it was
given to a new bride as a wedding gift from her mother, along with strict instruction to study it
thoroughly. In the 1,712 pages of this weighty tome, a newly married lady of the house could
find the detailed instructions needed to run an efficient and effective household. It is comprised
of 44 chapters, each specifically for the mistress of the house on separate members of her
domestic staff along with a collection of nearly 900 pages of recipes. It includes advice on every
12

manner of domestic necessity including fashion, hiring servants, childcare, flower arranging,
charitable endeavors, public behaviors, furniture placement, manners, entertaining, and even
chicken plucking. 23 It empowered these relatively powerless women at least within their homes,
giving them the status they lacked in the outside world, that of a leader. As the middle class wife
had between one and five servants, she wielded some power over the help, and due to the help,
could confidently manage her household. Mrs. Beeton’s famous first sentence became the
mantra of millions of middle-class wives in the nineteenth century:” As with the commander of
an army, or the leader of any enterprise, so it is with the mistress of the house.” 24 It seems ironic,
however that a young woman of 21 could have written the definitive book on household
management since, she was a working author, rather than a full-time housewife, the occupation
her name has been synonymous with for over a century.
In the preface of the book, Mrs. Beaton gave the most succinct and substantial quote ever
penned concerning the necessity of domestic perfection for the Victorian wife, written by Mrs.
Beeton herself. It not only expresses to the wife a need to keep a tidy house, but the threat of
abandonment to the outside world if her husband’s expectations are not only met, but exceeded.
This conflict permeates the life of the Victorian wife, placing on her a desperate need for
success.
“What moved me, in the first instance, to attempt a work like
this, was the discomfort and suffering which I had seen brought
upon men and women by household mismanagement. I have
always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family
discontent than a housewife's badly cooked dinners and untidy
ways. Men are now so well served out of doors - at their clubs,
well-ordered taverns, and dining-houses - that, in order to
compete with the attraction of these places, a mistress must be
thoroughly acquainted with the theory and practice of cookery,
as well as be perfectly conversant with all the other arts of
making and keeping a comfortable home.” 25
13

Taking on an even more urgent tone, Coventry Patmore’s Angel in the House, another
famous domestic guide, warned the new wife against failing to provide a perfect home for her
toiling husband. This passage, written by a man, rather than a sympathetic woman such as Mrs.
Beeton, perfectly illustrates the misogynistic double standard that pressured Victorian women
into an expectation of perfection.
“The man who goes home from his work to find his house in
disorder, with every article of furniture out of its place, the floor
unwashed or sloppy, his wife slovenly, his children untidy, his
dinner not finished or spoilt in the cooking, is much more likely
to “go on the spree” than the man who finds his house in order,
the furniture glistening, his well-cooked dinner ready laid on a
snowy cloth, and his wife and children tidy and cheerful.” 26
After the house was scrubbed clean by servants, and the children were tucked into bed by
the governess, well-to-do Victorian wives were faced with a new and unheard of affliction. They
were bored. The virtuous application of motherly and wifely love were satisfying enough, but
the average middle-class wife began to wonder if there wasn’t a way to expand upon that
satisfaction and take the message of propriety and virtue to the poor people she read about daily
in the newspapers and ladies magazines. The most popular cure for this middle-class female
malaise was charity. Women’s forays into the public world outside the domestic sphere were
minimal. Charitable work was one of the principal outlets for this public face of private virtue.
Gripped by a need to move out into the world and assert some kind of influence, wives
converged in groups to help the less fortunate see the benefits of hard work, virtue, morality, and
sincerity. Middle-class women initially became involved in generally innocuous charitable
causes such as bazaars, teas, and fund-raising. The more ambitious and radical of these
charitable angels would venture into the disadvantaged areas of the city, and administer help that
14

was more hands-on. 27 As with any aspect of the Victorian lady’s life, Mrs. Beeton weighs in on
the importance of charitable works:
“Visiting the houses of the poor is the only practical way really
to understand the actual state of each family; Great advantages
may result from visits paid to the poor; for there being,
unfortunately, much ignorance, generally, amongst them with
respect to all household knowledge, there will be opportunities
for advising and instructing them, in a pleasant and unobtrusive
manner, in cleanliness, industry, cookery, and good
management." 28
Mrs. Beeton’s assertion that the solution to the problem of the poverty stricken was
simply an adjustment in the behaviors of the poor was typical of the Victorian middle-class
ideology concerning the working class. Often it was believed that they were simply lazy, or
uneducated rather than trapped in an inescapable cycle of destitution perpetuated by their
savior’s successful husbands. When the zeal of humanitarian works became irresistible, the
tenor of the charities became less and less craft and Bundt cake driven, and led to actual
immersion in legitimate poor relief associations. Legislation would soon be passed that would
give them the charitable opportunity of a lifetime, the reformation of the poor victims of
prostitution.
Though they inhabited the same city, these two groups rarely crossed paths. That
changed however, mid-century, when the plight of the prostitute became a middle-class concern,
rather than a working class problem. Through the attention given them by the Contagious
Disease Acts of 1864, the plight of fallen women came to the attention of well-meaning middle-
class wives, and these two groups were immediately and inextricably linked. Neither was their
own woman, both completely defined and sustained by the male needs that permeated and took
precedence in their society. Together, they remained trapped in a sisterhood of misogyny and
degradation, each necessary yet neither truly valued. In the reign of a female monarch, they
15

suffered the stinging powerlessness of subjugation, one in the dirty whorehouses of London,
trading her soul and body for the price of rent, the other with a shining home and a book of
etiquette, sadness behind her modest smile. Early feminist, Josephine Butler commented on the
collision of these women, and asserted that it was the exploitation of men that kept the two
groups subservient. In her example, they are both a victim to the same man, a metaphoric
explanation for the evils of male promiscuity:
“The protected and refined ladies who are not only to be good,
but who are, if possible, to know nothing except what is good;
and those poor outcast daughters of the masses, whom they
purchase with money, with whom they think they may consort
in evil whenever it pleases them to do so, before returning to
their own separated and protected homes.” 29
Up until the first decades of the nineteenth centuries, prostitution had been only loosely
regulated and even more loosely of interest to the middle class world. From 1800 to around
1850, the customer base of the Victorian prostitute consisted mainly of poor working class men
of the cities, sailors and soldiers. 30 For nearly 50 years, prostitutes were spreading syphilis with
little or no treatment for the disease. Because of their economic disadvantage, many waited until
too late to seek treatment, and the disease was often fatal. The soldiers who contracted the
disease, however, were more fortunate, due to their access to adequate health care. By 1864, one
in three military sick cases were complaints that could be attributed to syphilitic infection. 31
With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, especially after the 1840s, that changed. A
new customer began knocking on the brothel door, the middle-class male. The readily available
disposable income of the middle-class, combined with the longer duration between puberty and
marriage 32 allowed for indulgent pastimes such as gentleman’s clubs and prostitution. Several
brothels began distributing advertisements, describing for these affluent customers the attributes
of the ladies that they had to offer. Attaching genteel habits to the prostitutes persuaded the
16

cultured new customers that this secret indulgence was not with a common whore, but with a
misplaced lady, who just happened to be absent of the prudish virtue that the women who were
marriageable considered their highest duty. So the middle-class male would peruse the
advertisements, looking for a young woman with whom he could spend his time and indulge his
darkest desires with no risk of shame or being socially ostracized. In Harris’s Guide to Convent
Garden Ladies, a man can casually browse the listings to find the prostitute who will most fulfill
his expectations for the evening. This particular advertisement came from a summer 1849
edition:
“Miss B. Number 18 Old Compton Street, Soho:
This accomplished nymph has just attained her eighteenth year,
and fraught with every perfection, enters a volunteer in the field
of Venus. She plays on the pianoforte, sings, dances, and is the
mistress of every manoeuver in the amorous contest that can
enhance the coming pleasure; is of middle stature, fine auburn
hair, dark eyes and very inviting countenance, which ever seems
to beam delight and love. In bed she is all the heart can wish, or
eyes admires every limb is symmetry, every action under cover
truly amorous; her price two pounds.” 33
These indulgences in vice very often led to the contraction of venereal disease in the
middle-class male populations, where it had rarely been before. Only when the effects of the
lifestyle of prostitutes overlapped with the comfort and sanctity of the middle-class family, did
the obliteration of prostitution become a pressing issue. When the wives and babies of newly
affluent Victorian gentleman became ill with the pox, or other sexually transmitted diseases,
enraged moral reformers took note. The rampant nature of syphilis was the springboard needed
for government intervention in the lives of the Victorian prostitute.
The eradication of syphilis took center stage with the advent of the Contagious Disease
Acts of the 1864, 1867 and 1869. These acts were intended to keep diseased prostitutes from
plying their trade and infecting soldiers and middle-class men. Women who were suspected
17

prostitutes were subjected to rigorous and involuntary internal physical examinations by police
and, when determined to have syphilis, were admitted to a Lock Hospital for a period of three to
six months, until she was deemed no longer contagious. 34 Lock Hospitals were cold, indifferent
government run institutions for the treatment of venereal disease. While in the lock hospital, the
women were forced to labor as if in a workhouse, cleaning the wards and submitting to frequent
medical inspections to confirm their infection was still present. The most popular medical
treatment for syphilis at the time was the application of mercury. Many believed that, with the
cessation of symptoms after the use of mercury, syphilis was cured. Mercury is highly
dangerous to the human body and produced several horrendous side effects such as excessive
salivation, gastroenteritis, rashes, liver and kidney damage, and it also caused teeth to fall out.
The most debilitating and heinous effect of mercury poisoning was eventual insanity. 35
Unfortunately, mercury was not a cure, and the women were most often released back to the
street still infected, as well as mentally ill, free to ply their trade once more.
While a resident at a lock hospital, the prostitutes were subjected to moral training as well
as medical treatment, learning bible passages and singing hymns daily to help save their fallen
souls. Unfortunately for these infected women, their time in a lock hospital was not simply spent
reflecting on their eternal souls and singing “Amazing Grace”. They were exposed to that most
determined and dedicated of Victorian creatures, the well-dressed, well-meaning Angels of
Mercy who saw in them potential ladies waiting to be educated and saved, just like Mrs. Beeton
taught them.
In this method of reformation, the middle-class wives saw an opportunity to help their
misled and victimized sisters once they were released from the lock hospital. Many became
involved in rescue societies that attempted to mold prostitutes into upright, productive, and
18

valuable members of the Victorian industrial machine. Empowered and effecting change in the
world by perpetuating their values outside the sanctity of the home, the Victorian wife was at
last, fulfilled. Declaring a God-given, pressing need to save the soul of the prostitute, the bored
wives of captains of industry and image conscience clergy took the whore by the hand and
attempted to save them from their lives of moral decay. The opening of “asylums” or houses of
reform were a quite popular form of charitable cause in the 1860’s and 1870’s, though they had
been in existence since the 1840’s. Female reformers tended to volunteer at these houses,
spending time with the inmates, aiding in their religious instruction and teaching them basic
skills such as sewing, cooking, and cleaning. Using the knowledge they acquired from their
handbooks and ladies journals, the middle-class wives who had never washed a dish, scrubbed a
floor, or cooked a meal, spent their days in valuable service to the cause, imparting their superior
knowledge and virtue to the poor unfortunates who they had mercifully plucked from a life of
sexual slavery and shameless sin. 36
There were hundreds of such houses throughout England, but perhaps the most famous
and prolifically recorded reform home was the Urania Cottage. At any given time, there were
approximately 100 fallen women receiving treatment there, and nearly as many women
volunteers aiding in the cause. 37 This model house of reform was a charitable collaboration
between a wealthy bank heiress, Angela Burdett Coutts and the most prolific Victorian novelist
of the time, Charles Dickens. An active participant in the house, rather than a celebrity endorser,
Dickens had a hand in the most minute and mundane details at Urania Cottage. Creating for the
women who came there seeking help a supportive and constructive environment was central to
both Dickens and Coutts. The house was split into two wards, one for newcomers who waited
for a probationary period before being transferred to the second, larger, more permanent lodgings
19

in the main house. This time of acclamation was important, especially for those inmates who
suffered from drug addiction of alcoholism. 38 Dickens is particularly adamant that the women
not be reminded constantly of their sins, but encouraged. In a letter to Miss Coutts, he explains
the reason for these thoughts: “She is degraded and fallen, but not lost, having the shelter; and
that the means of Return to Happiness, are now about to be put into her own hands.” 39
Of course, there was, as with any moral training, set in place a system of reward and
punishment, in which points were given and deducted depending upon the behavior of the
women. Chores and restrictions were doled out as punishment, yet the Urania Cottage
maintained a strict policy of keeping the punishments tame compared to those at other
Magdalene institutions. The inmates of Urania Cottage were there voluntarily as well, while
most others were pressed into homes as conditions for release from prisons or workhouses.
Dickens advocated the goal of the institution should be to build a “foundation of firmness and
restraint” in the inmates, he asserted, needed to leave their care with the possession of “order and
punctuality, cleanliness, the whole routine of household duties — as washing, mending, cooking,
and a sturdy education in responsibility and reason.” 40 With the advent of these homes, the
women who would normally return to the streets often found employment as domestics or
factory workers, and some even managed to marry and have families. Sadly, the numbers of
successful reformations are not available, as many women returned to the Urania Cottage several
times, and those who went back to the streets simply melted back into the human effluence that
was the Victorian Urban poor.
Eventually, in 1883, the Contagious Disease Acts were repealed, thanks to the efforts of
passionate repeal campaigns and the astronomical cost of maintaining the Lock Hospitals. 41 The
Contagious Disease Act’s unintended side effect was the literal collision of two women whose
20

paths were never intended to cross. It brought together the private, domestic, and moral Madonna
and the public, liberated, and sexually provocative Whore. One was zealously bent on the
redemption of the victim of lust; the other cast as the harlot, simply trying to survive, and
helplessly swept away in the tide of moral reform.
Though they were born below the poverty level and made a living off the sins of
unfaithful men, the Victorian Prostitutes provided a valuable service to the nation. What the
bored, holier-than-thou wifely reformers failed to notice was that prostitutes, by plying their
trade in the brothels and alley-ways, were already performing their societal function. The
Victorian Prostitute’s ultimate purpose in the patriarchal structure was that of shielding of young,
virginal Victorian Ladies from the basest carnal demands of the men who were the cornerstones
of their civilization. Prostitution not only satisfied the sexual appetites of the middle-class male,
it shielded the married women trying to save their souls from the darkest passions of their
husbands, thus keeping the marital bed the sacrosanct and noble thing it was intended to be.
Perhaps if the wife and the prostitute could have spoken to the epitome of Victorian femininity,
Queen Victoria, she would have had words of wisdom for them both, a bit of womanly advice
for their mutual suffering, some answer to the victimization that they both suffered at the hands
of male ambition. If asked, she may have squared her shoulders, lifted her head, looked regally
at her two questioning subjects and said: “We poor creatures are born for a man’s pleasure and
amusement, and destined to go through endless trials and sufferings.” 42
21

ENDNOTES
1 A.N. Wilson, The Victorians (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004), 156.
2 Daniel Pool. , What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1993), 26.
3 Kellow Chesney, The Victorian Underworld (London: Maurice Temple Smith LTD, 1970), 322.
4 A.N. Wilson, The Victorians (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004), 163.
5 Martha Vicinus, Suffer and Be Still (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1973), 97.
6 Ibid, 108.
7 Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society. (London: Cambridge University Press,
1980), 10.
8 Ibid, 87.
9 Ibid, 15.
10 Ibid, 36.
11 Ibid, 44.
12 London Times, February 24, 1858 “The Great Social Evil.”
13 W.T. Stead Pall Mall Gazette, July 6, 1888: 2.
14 Ibid, 1
15 Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, 148.
16 William Acton, Prostitution Considered in its Moral, Sanitary, and Social Aspects (London: Routledge Press,
1870).
17 Wilson, The Victorians, 28.
18 Ibid., 204.
19 Vicinus, Suffer and Be Still, 45.
20 Ibid., 48.
21 Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Daughters of England: Their Position in Society, Character & Responsibilities
(London: University of Michigan Electronic Library, 2009 org. 1842), 37.
22 Judith Flanders, Inside the Victorian Home (London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003), 78.
23 Isabella Beeton, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Accessed at: http://www.mrsbeeton.com/.
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid.
26
Flanders. Inside the Victorian Home, 17.
27
Vicinus. Suffer and Be Still, 101.
28
Isabella Beeton. Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Accessed at http://www.mrsbeeton.com.
29
Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, 61.
30
Ibid., 12.
31
Debora Hayden, Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 92.
32
Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, 128.
33 Ibid, 13.
34 Sheldon Watts, Epidemics and History: Disease, Power, and Imperialism (New Haven, 1999), 345-346.
35
Ibid., 348.
36
Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, 130-132.
37
Ibid, 134.
38
Michael Slater, Charles Dickens (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 275.
39
Ibid, 281.
40
Ibid., 277.
41
Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, 99.
42
Accessed online at: http://thinkexist.com/quotes/queen_victoria/
22

LIST OF SOURCES
Primary Sources
Acton, William. Prostitution Considered in its Moral, Sanitary, and Social Aspects. London:
Routledge Press, 1870.
Beeton, Isabella. Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. Accessed at:
http://www.mrsbeeton.com.
Ellis, Sarah Stickney. The Daughters of England: Their Position in Society, Character &
Responsibilities. London: University of Michigan Electronic Library, 2009 org. 1842.
London Times, February 24, 1858 “The Great Social Evil.”
Stead, W.T. Pall Mall Gazette, July 6, 1888: 2.
Secondary Sources
Chesney, Kellow. The Victorian Underworld. London: Maurice Temple Smith, Ltd., 1970.
Hayden, Debora. Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis. New York: Basic Books,
2003.
Flanders, Judith. Inside the Victorian Home. London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003.
Pool, Daniel. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew. New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1993.
Slater, Michael. Charles Dickens. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
Vicinus, Martha. Suffer and Be Still. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1973.
Watts, Sheldon. Epidemics and History: Disease, Power, and Imperialism. New Haven, 1999).
Walkowitz, Judith. Prostitution and Victorian Society. London: Cambridge University Press,
1980.
Wilson, A.N. The Victorians. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.
23