Prostitution And The Victorians

Prostitution and the Victorians

Victorian Britain has long been viewed as a tightly buttoned society in sexual matters. In fact, female prostitution, or the Great Social Evil as contemporaries called it, was endemic and the persistence of the phenomenon infuriated anti-vice campaigners, while perplexing social reformers.The issue being debated was whether society should tolerate prostitution as an inevitable phenomenon which should be regulated in the public interest - the public health position - or suppressed as an intolerable evil - the moral purity position. This important debate is traced through an examination of extracts from key contemporary polemics and eyewitness accounts, interwoven with a running commentary on the pattern of the debate and its implications for the study of Victorian life.