American city in which I lived undertook an elaborate inquiry into
prostitution therein, and some of them came to me in advance, as a
practical journalist, for advice as to how to proceed. I found that all
of them shared the common superstition that the professional life of
the average prostitute is only five years long, and that she invariably
ends in the gutter. They were enormously amazed When they
unearthed the truth. This truth was to the effect that the average
prostitute of that town ended her career, not in the morgue but at
the altar of God, and that those who remained unmarried often
continued in practice for ten, fifteen and even twenty years, and
then retired on competences. It was established, indeed, that fully
eighty per cent married, and that they almost always got husbands
who would have been far beyond their reach had they
remained virtuous. For one who married a cabman or petty pugilist
there were a dozen who married respectable mechanics, policemen,
small shopkeepers and minor officials, and at least two or three who
married well-to-do tradesmen and professional men. Among the
thousands whose careers were studied there was actually one who
ended as the wife of the town's richest banker--that is, one who
bagged the best catch in the whole community. This woman had
begun as a domestic servant, and abandoned that harsh and dreary
life to enter a brothel. Her experiences there polished and civilized
her, and in her old age she was a grande dame of great dignity.
Much of the sympathy wasted upon women of the ancient
profession is grounded upon an error as to their own attitude toward
it. An educated woman, hearing that a frail sister in a public stew is
expected to be amiable to all sorts of bounders, thinks of how she
would shrink from such contacts, and so concludes that the actual
prostitute suffers acutely. What she overlooks is that these men,
however gross and repulsive they may appear to her, are measurably