The Final Recollections of Charles Dickens Read Online Free PDF

Webster offered Florence a new life, one of ease and comfort. All that would be required of her, from time to time, would be to lay with a man.

    The sale of women has been a part of every society from the beginning of history. It has been widely condemned as an affront to God, yet it has always flourished. Prostitution is older than any of the world’s Holy Books. It is spoken of in the Bible and the written record of every culture.
    Man is endowed by nature with passions that must be gratified. No blame can be attached to him who seeks a woman of pleasure to fulfill his needs. This is the rationale that has always been used to justify the conduct of the purchaser in the transaction. Men and women of all classes in every age have known the pleasures and degradation of prostitution. It has never been, and never will be, eradicated in any place or time.
    Some women are drawn to prostitution by a love of sex and excitement, but they are few in number. For most, it is poverty that draws them in. They have lived in filth and squalor with four or five siblings in a single room. Perhaps they worked for pitifully low wages as a shop girl or domestic servant. Men set upon themanyway, so they decided that they might as well receive payment for their favours. A common prostitute can earn in a night what she might otherwise earn in several weeks of honest labour. An uncommon prostitute can earn considerably more.
    Prostitution was in full view in the 1830s in London. At the lowest level, frowsily dressed women walked the streets of poor neighbourhoods. They brought men to rooms for rent or performed their acts in alleys and other public places. The same women congregated in public taverns and foul dens where vice was closely packed and beds were available on the floor above or in a building nearby.
    More presentable women also solicited in public. They were seen in carriages or leisurely strolling on promenades in the park, elegantly dressed, attracting attention by the striking colours and provocative cut of their attire. They wore satin bonnets trimmed with ribbons and ornamental flowers, their cheeks red with rouge as they flirted with their eyes. They could stare at a man in a way that was innocent yet inviting. By their walk, the manner in which they held their bodies, and their countless gestures, they could turn a man away or signal to him, “Yes, I am what you think I am.”
    They were a common sight at public events, these ladies. At dance halls and, most notably, at the theatre. They congregated at theatre bars and moved from box to box. In some theatres, it was understood that the upper tier was a place for solicitation. A woman who attended theatre alone was presumed to be a whore.
    Some women of pleasure leave the trade to marry or pursue a different means of earning. But for most,prostitution is a slippery slope to a ruinous end. Syphilis and gonorrhoea are its twin plagues.
    And there is a greater horror. Child brothels existed in London in the 1830s, often patronised because of the ignorant belief that sexual relations with a virgin would cure venereal disease. The age of consent in England was twelve. Many of the girls pressed into such service were twelve or thirteen. Some were eleven. Across the ocean in New York, the age of consent was ten.
    Hortense Webster was disinterested in all of the common and uncommon forms of prostitution mentioned above. Her business was transacted out of public sight in the most exclusive kind of brothel, a private establishment known as The Abbey.
    The Abbey was a three-story house in a good neighbourhood among private residences. It replicated an aristocratic club. The door was kept locked. Returning clientele and new gentlemen who came with a letter of reference were admitted.
    Hortense’s patrons were wealthy men, often married, who were willing to spend lavishly for beautiful women, luxurious surroundings, and discreet privacy. The most respectable men of London,