As an aside, if it really is the oldest profession, how did their first clients get any money to pay them? 
True story. A scientist was studying economics and introduced the concept of money into a test group of monkeys (and these were monkeys not primates). The monkeys got tokens and could use them to buy treats like pieces of fruit or marshmallows which would have different prices. Within less than a week of the monkeys figuring out the concept, the scientist oberved a male monkey giving a female a token and then having sex with her.
And the monkeys without tokens had to spank themselves.
Monkeys are primates…
I’d add to this that a sexually conservative society where women are considered “ruined” if they have pre- or extra-marital sex creates its own supply of prostitutes. (Perhaps not sufficient to meet demand, but a non-zero supply.) Human nature being what it is then some women are bound to wind up “ruined”, and what are they supposed to do with themselves then? If a woman can’t find a respectable husband or respectable work then prostitution might start to look like a pretty good alternative…especially if her family and social circle already consider her no better than a whore.
Thank you for mentioning this. I think people often overlook the fact that “Victorian prudishness” was to a large extent a reaction against the Georgian Era. This may be partially because the Victorians did such a good job of whitewashing history and entertainment that later generations have accepted the Victorian version of things.
You’re right. I meant to say they were monkeys not apes.
Just how did they “cure” anything? Or just make sure the disease had gone into remission and no open sores before the women resumed work?
(Good taste forbids telling the joke about “Sandpaper Sally” here.)
I always wondered too how prostitutes avoided getting pregnant in those days in those situations. Considering many normal wives were popping them out once a year or so, wouldn’t the average working girl be “on leave” about half the time? Or is that why the population of Manhattan rose so quickly?
Gone With the Wind explains a lot about prostitution, with Belle and her “sporting house.” It’s established that Belle had a son out of wedlock and implied that is the reason for her descent into prostitution.
One of the best lines from the book is when Rhett is raging a campaign to earn his way back into respectibility after the birth of Bonnie (paraphrased): If he went to Belle Watling’s house, he do so at under the cover of night like other men, instead of tying his horse up in front of the building in the middle of the day, advertising his presence within.
In short, it was okay to do it, as long as you didn’t advertise it. And everyone knew what was going on.
As I understand it, they didn’t always avoid getting pregnant; unwanted babies fell victim to abortion, natural miscarriage, high rates of infant mortality in the general population, and outright infanticide. Archeological excavations of urban brothels (such as this onein the Five Points area) have turned up significant numbers of fetal and infant remains.
Chronic STD infections will also have an impact on fertility. A prostitute who had been working for a while might well have so much inflammation and/or scarring in her uterus and fallopian tubes that she was infertile. A man who frequented prostitutes and picked up an STD (or a series of STDs) might also be subfertile because of repeated bouts of inflammation and scarring in *his *reproductive system.
I doubt that pregnancy kept the average prostitute from working, unless she was about to pop or had recently given birth. There’s plenty of stuff you can do with a big belly, and a customer desperate for “relief” might not care what a woman’s belly looked like, anyway. And there’s always the pregnancy/lactation fetish crowd (what, you thought that was new?).
I remember my mom telling me that the rear entrance of the liquor store was called the Church Door. It’s the way the Good People bought their booze unlike the trash who went in the front door to buy the same stuff. This was in rural Alabama in the 40’s and 50’s, where it was pretty uptight about booze for church folk.
So it’s all about pretenses and appearances.
WAG : shoot the wench full of penicillin and cross fingers.
Further baseless assumption : I think mostly they made sure diseased hookers were identified and known to the Madam, who could then kick them to the curb or something like that. After all, the point wasn’t to help the prostitutes, but to make sure their Johns didn’t bring new friends home…
Condoms were known since forever - even back in the Renaissance, they knew wrapping a length of sheep gut around your John Thomas and tying a knot at the tip would prevent pregnancies. I’ve even seen some high class numbers made out of velvet - presumably re-usable.
You may shudder about now.
ETA : of course, even if that failed, well, as Tim Roth put it in Rob Roy, “I’m sure you know a crone with a twig…”
Penicillin as a useable medicine was a WWII invention. Before that, the closest I’ve seen to real medicine is teh mercury treatments (??!!) and some old movie with Oliver Reed once referenced a treatment of sticking a hot wire up the penis. (!!)
I also recall reading that the British Archives still have the original “French Letter” - not the used condom, but the letter where one of the kings asks his ambassador to pick up some of those handy French things for him. Obviously such things were possible, but in the centuries before mass production, I suspect use by the general population was minimal.
While the contemporary equivalent of a coathanger was always available, I wonder how many women availed themselves of the tool; even in the days leading up to Roe V. Wade, women died often from the treatment with or without penicillin and other medical care afterwards. Was it reliable in earlier times? Was there a “right” way to do it? My impression of the possibly fatal procedures like that was that it was more often done by “good girls in trouble” who simply could not face the shame of having their condition known. How dangerous are home abortions?
A really good resource if you can find it (your local university library may have it, or you can try Interlibrary Loan) is Edward Crapsey’s The Nether Side of New York : or, the Vice, Crime, and Poverty of the Great Metropolis, originally published in 1872. It has lots of information on prostitution in New York at that time.
Here’s a link to its WorldCat entry, in case you want the publishing info.
Another good resource, although it’s a work of fiction, is Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White, which is the story of a prostitute in London in 1875. It’s well-researched and full of gritty details like the composition of the spermicidal douche a prostitute would use after being with a customer.