Prostitution in the United States by Howard B Woolston, Ph D

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE PROSTITUT The Prostitute defined.?Classes.?Number in the United States.? Age. ? Nativity. ? Civil Status. ? Children. ? Physical condition.? Mentality.?Family history.?Education.?Occupation.?Earnings.? Living conditions. ? Sex history. ? Police records. ?Institutional records. In any study...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE PROSTITUT The Prostitute defined.?Classes.?Number in the United States.? Age. ? Nativity. ? Civil Status. ? Children. ? Physical condition.? Mentality.?Family history.?Education.?Occupation.?Earnings.? Living conditions. ? Sex history. ? Police records. ?Institutional records. In any study of prostitution the first subject for consideration is naturally the prostitute herself. As a commercialized vice the business of prostitution centers about the woman who supplies the human material. In the United States by dictionary definition and by common usage a prostitute is a woman who practises indiscriminate lewdness for hire. Until 1918 this was also if not a statutory definition at least ordinary legal usage.1 In years gone by history, literature, and such influences as secrecy and the traditional ignorance of the facts of life on the part of respectable women helped to build up a wall of mystery about the prostitute. She was supposed to be beautiful, charming, intelligent, more capable than the modest but more or less commonplace virtuous woman of arresting and retaining the interest of men. 1 Prior to 1918 there appears to be only one statutory definition of a prostitute, that found in Section 2372, Burn's Statutes, Indiana, 1914. Any female who frequents or lives in a house or houses of ill-fame or associates with women of bad character for chastity, either in public or at a house which men of bad character frequent or visit, or who commits adultery or fornication for hire, shall be deemed a prostitute. A study of decisions made up to this time shows that in some cases the element of gain was considered an essential ingredient of prostitution, and that in others this was not the case. Dictionary definitions, whether those of Webster or of Law ...