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Regulation system
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The Regulatory system or regulation system was an English language term for a specific type of control system for prostitution that was used in a number of Western nations between the early 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, as well as in some countries outside of Europe.
The purpose of the system was to take control of prostitution and prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infection by the forced registration of prostitute women, who were allowed to sell sex in exhange for regular compulsory medical examinations for sexual diseases.[1]
During the course of the 19th century, the system was introduced in a many parts of the Western world, such as France, the British Empire, the Russian Empire and the German Empire, but also in the Ottoman Empire. The system originated the First French Empire of Emperor Napoleon I, who introduced it in France and the countries occupied by France in the early 19th century. It was viewed as a role model for how to address prostitution, and introduced in many other countries during the course of the 19th century - either on national level, or in a more limited form by local city laws. From the second half of the 19th century, the system attracted opposition from the women's movement and other activists. The system was targeted by national abolitionists organizations that collaborated in an international campaign, which was often coordinated with the campaign against the white slave trade (sex trafficking). The system was finally abolished during the first half of the 20th century.
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Background
The system originated the First French Empire during the reign of Emperor Napoleon I (r. 1799–1814). The purpose was to control the spread of sexually transmitted infection by taking control of prostitution. The system was introduced in several of the countries occupied by France during the Napoleonic era. The system was kept after the fall of Napoleon in 1815.
The system eventually came to be seen as a role model in many countries for how to address the problem of prostitution and sexually transmitted infection. During the course of the century, the system was introduced in many countries that had never been controlled by Napoleon.
In the 19th century, there was a common view on prostitution in the Western world as a "necessary evil". This view built upon the sexual double standards for men and women. Women were considered to have a limited to no sexual needs, and it was not seen as socially acceptable for a woman to have a sexual life outside of marriage.[2] Some contemporary medical and psychological theories even defined women with a high sex drive as insane. By contrast, men were considered to have a high and strong sexual needs, and it was seen as unavoidable for men to seek sexual satisfaction, and useless to try to prevent them from doing so, regardless if they were married or not.[3] Some contemporary medical and psychological theories even saw it as necessary for a man's health to have sex regularly.
The system
The contemporary sexual double standard resulted in prostituted women to be viewed as a "necessary evil" in order to protect other women from sexual harassment from men, since it was seen as impossible to prevent men from seeking sexual satisfaction. In parallell with prostitution being seen as necessary, it also caused great concern for public health, because of the spread of sexually transmitted infection. It was therefore seen as desirable for the authorities to control prostitution, which was otherwise assumed to take place in secrecy.
The "French system" was seen as a solution to this dilemma, and as a consequence, a system with registration and regular force examinations of prostitute women were introduced in a number of countries. There were some variation in the method, but the principles remained the same.[4] Prostitute women were officially registered as prostitutes and forced to undergo regular medical examinations for sexual diseases: as long as the woman complied with the examinations, she was allowed to work, but failure to pass the test, or a refusal to report for an examination, could result in arrest and confinement to a lock hospital.[5] If a registered woman could provide proof that she had acquired another way to support herself financially and was no longer a prostitute, she would be removed from the register.[6] However, when a woman was registered as a prostitute, this was visible in her identification documents. This made it hard for her to get another job, which resulted in many women being unable to find other work.[7]
Abolitionist movement
From the second half of the 19th century however, the system attracted organized opposition. The movement working for the abolition of the regulation system became known as abolitionists. The opposition came from both the women's movement as well as from other contemporary social movements, such as the social purity movement and its eqvivalents in several different countries. Abolitionist organizations was formed in many countries, which also collaborated internationally.
The start of the organized opposition to the system originated in Britain. From 1869 the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts campaign against the System under the leadership of Josephine Butler. Butler did not restrict herself to Britain but made foreign tours to attracted attention to the issue in other countries. In 1875 the International Abolitionist Federation (IAF) was founded to coordinate an international campaign against the regulation system. This was followed by national organizations in many countries: some of them defined as affiliations or branches of the IAF, or independent organizations with the same goal. The so-called abolitionist movement campaigned against the Regulation System as well as against the white slave trade (the contemporary term of sex trafficking) and prostitution in general. In 1877 the International Abolitionist Federation organized the First International Abolitionist Congress in Geneva in Switzerland, with delegates from several countries.[8] [9]
The abolitionists viewed the control system as hypocritical, as it tolerated a prostitution that was officially condemned by society; and as a symbol of sexual double standards and a form of harassment of female sex workers, who were subjected to invasive forcible examination on threat of arrest, and targeted as the sole carriers of sexual infection, while their male clients were left out.
The system was finally abolished in most countries during the first half of the 20th century.
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By country
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Belgium
The Regulation System was introduced in the area of what was to become Belgium during the French occupation (1794–1815). The "French System", as it was called, was kept when Belgium became an independent nation in 1830 and officially and legally recognized in 1844.[10]
The System was managed by the city authorities and the prostitution police, who had the power of attorney to control the brothels and the sex workers, and to sentence and imprison women who did not comply with the regulations without interference from the justice system.[11]
In the mid 19th century, the number of registered brothels diminished in Brussels. This concerned the authorities who saw the system as the only way to control prostitution. A reform of 1877 allowed for the registration of women under 21 in the brothels. This resulted in trafficking of under aged girls to the brothels in Brussels, and culminated in the infamous scandal known as the White Slave trade Affair in 1880–1881.[12]
The Regulation System was abolished in Belgium in 1948.
Britain
The Regulation System was introduced on a local level by the introduction of the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864.[13] The Contagious Diseases Act mandated that women suspected of being prostitutes were to be officially registered as prostitutes and subjected to regular compulsory controls for sexual diseases. [14]
Britain was the country of origin of the abolitionist movement against the Regulation System. From 1869 the Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts campaign against the System under the leadership of Josephine Butler. The campaign was eventually to spread from Britain to other nations. The abolitionist movement was eventually to become successful.
The Regulation System was abolished in Britain when the Contagious Diseases Acts was repealed in 1886.
Denmark
The regulation system had been informally used by the Police in Copenhagen since 1815.[15] When the system was given a permanent organization in 1863 and was finally formally legalized in law in 1874, it attracted attention and disgust around the sexual double standard illustrated by the regulation system.[16]
The Foreningen imod Lovbeskyttelse for Usædelighed was established in 1879 with the purpose to repeal the regulation system. [16][17][18]
The campaign was given a boost by the great scandal of 1895, when several police officers in the capital were exposed as having used sex workers by functioning as their pimps and clients.[16]
After the ban on brothels in 1901 and the abolition of the regulation system in 1906, the association regarded their goal as having been achieved, and dissolved itself.[15]
Egypt
After the British occupation of 1882, the authorities were concerned about disease spreading amongst the troops. They made legal provisions to control prostitution and introduced a system of healthcare.[19][20] In July 1885 Egypt's Ministry of the Interior introduced regulationism for the health inspection of prostitutes.[19] Further regulations were introduced in 1896 to control brothels.[19][21]
In 1932 a cabinet decree abolished licences for prostitution and established the "Public Morals Police".[19] A new penal code was introduced in 1937 and included a section to punish men who lived off the earnings of prostitutes.[19] In 1949 Military Order no. 76 was issued abolishing brothels.[19]
Finland
The Regulation System was introduced in then Russian Finland when the Helsinki Police Station installed a Prostitution Control Bureau in 1847, where prostiute women were registered and controlled for sexual disease.[16]
The System attracted opposition from social reformers. In 1880 the Finska Federationen was founded to campaign for the abolition of the system.[16] When the system was reformed in 1894 and 1897, the reforms were substantial enough to bee seen as a success by the abolitionists, although the system was not fully abolished.[16]
In 1907 the system was abolished and the health care checks of prostitutes were transferred from the police to the normal health care services.[16]
France
France was the country of origin of the Regulation System. In 1804 emperor Napoleon I legalized prostitution, provided that it was conducted under police control by women who registered in a state approved brothel (called "maisons de tolérance") and was regularly controlled for sexually transmitted diseases.[22]
Only women over the age of 21, who were already confirmed to have been active in prostitution, were allowed to register at a brothel.[23] The "French System" became a role model for other countries in the 19th century.
In 1879, the Association [Francaise] pour l'abolition de la prostitution réglementée (AFAPR) was founded to campaign for the abolition of the regulation system in France.[24]
The Regulation System, as well as brothels and procuring, were abolished in France in 1946 after a successful campaign by Marthe Richard.
German Empire
Some parts of Germany were occupied by the French Empire of Napoleon in 1806–1815, and the Regulation System was present in some German states prior to unification. In 1839 the Regulation System was introduced to the Kingdom of Prussia.[25]
The Regulation System was indirectly made a national law after the unification of Germany under the Kingdom of Prussia. The Criminal Code of 1871 prohibited brothels and "commercial fornication"; however, in the Criminal Code of 1876 prostitution was only punishable if the woman worked outside police supervision.[26]
In 1899, the abolitionist movement was organized in Germany with the foundation of the German branch of the International Abolitionist Federation, the Deutscher Zweig IAF (DZIAF), under the leadership of Anna Pappritz and Katharina Scheven.
The Regulation System was abolished in Germany in 1927.
Greece
The Regulation System was introduced in Greece after the Greek War of Independence and the foundation of the Kingdom of Greece.
The System was informally practiced from 1834 onward, when prostitutes were allowed to work in special neighborhoods in some public localities such as hotels, in exchange for registration with the police and monthly heakth controls: it was formally introduced in 1856.[27]
The diakanonistikon Regulation System was abolished in Greece in 1955.[28]
Italy
The Regulation System was known in Italy as the Regolamentazione, and introduced after the unification of Italy in 1860 with France as a role model.[29] The System gave strict rules were the registered brothels were allowed to be located and mandated them to always have their window shutters closed.[30]
Josephine Butler visited Italy in 1874, Anna Maria Mozzoni founded and chaired a branch of the International Abolitionist Federation in Milano, and Alaide Gualberta Beccari raised the issue in her magazine La Donna in 1875.[31]
The Regulation System was abolished in Italy via the Legge Merlin-law in 1958, which was initiatted by the Socialist Party.
The Netherlands
The Regulation System was introduced in The Netherlands during the French occupation of Napoleon in 1810. The System was organized in accordance with the "French model", with registered brothels and regular controls of its workers.
The System was opposed by the Dutch women's movement, who viewed it an illustration of sexual double standards and oppression of women, and in 1884, the abolition movement was founded in the form of Nederlandsche Vrouwenbond ter Verhooging van het Zedelijk Bewustzijn (NPV) under the leadership of Anna van Hogendorp and Mariane van Hogendorp.[32]
The Regulation System, alongside brothels and procuring, was abolished in The Netherlands in 1911.
Norway
The Regulation System was introduced in Norway on the municipal level rather than on national level. The background was a new regulation in the public health care, Sunnhetsloven of 1860, that made it compulsory for the municipal authorities to prevent the spread of sexual disease. While this law did not in itself refer to prostitutes, it was used by the municipal authorities in the three biggest cities in Norway - Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim - to introduced the Regulation System, known as Prostitutionskontrollen ('Prostitution Controll') in their juristiction. [16]
In 1882 the Norwegian branch of the International Abolitionist Federation was founded under the name Kristiania Forening til Fræmme af Sædelighed; after the anti-prostitution novel Albertine was banned in 1886, the women's movement under Norsk kvinnesaksforening launched a campaign against the system which gained support by the some politicians from the Venstre, a campaign which was to become succesful.[34]
In 1888, the Municipal authorities of Oslo abolished the system by including the health checks of prostitutes in the general health checks for everyone.[16] This was however only a local decision, since the system was regulated by municipal laws. The System lasted longest in the city of Bergen, where the municipal authorities did not abolish the system until 1909.[16]
Ottoman Empire
During the era of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, prostitution was connected to slavery. Islamic Law formally prohibited prostitution as zina. However, since the legal principle of concubinage in Islam allowed a man to have intercourse with his female slave without it being defined as zina, prostitution was practiced by a pimp selling his female slave on the slave market to a client, who was allowed to have intercourse with her as her new owner, and who after intercourse returned his ownership of her to her pimp on the pretext of discontent, which was a legal and accepted method for prostitution in the Islamic world.[35] The prostitution of female slaves was formally prohibited as a result of the issuing of a new code of law, the Kanunname of 1889.[36] Former female slaves rarely had other options than to continue to work for their former enslavers. If they were fired, they were often forced to rely on prostitution to survive.
The growing number of prostitutes who were not slaves changed the system of prostitution. The Regulation System was introduced with the 1884 Ottoman Prostitution Regulation, when brothels were legalized on condition that they were registered and that their workers were registered and subjected to regular controls of sexual diseases.[37]
Portugal
From 1853 onward, municipal laws introduced the system of regulatory prostitution, with medical controls of prostitutes to control the spread of venereal disease and restriction of the movement of sex workers to separate them from other women and keep prostitution out of public sight. [38]
From the 1920s the right wing dictatorship officially condemned prositutiton due to its religious ideology, but in practical policy considered it necessary in order to protect non-prostitute women from sexual abuse, and upheld a strict control system with registration of sex workers and brothels.[39] When the Portuguese women's movement organized and made international contact in the early 20th century, the Liga Portuguesa Abolicionista was founded in collaboration of the International Abolitionist Federation to campaign for an abolition of the regulatory prostitution system grew.[40] The reform law of 1949 was introduce to gradually abolish the regulatory system, since it introduced stricter regulation of brothels and banned the registration of any new sex workers, which would eventually end with a ban of prostitution in 1963.[41]
Russian Empire
The Regulation System was introduced in the Russian Empire on 6 October 1843, when a reform legalized prostitution provided that the prostitutes subjected to registration and regular controls for sexual diseases. The pass and identification of the registered prostitutes were replaced with an special identification card that identified them as prostitutes, known as the Yellow ticket.[42]
The Regulation System was abolished when prostitution was banned in Russia after the Russian Revolution in 1917.
Spain
The regulation system was introduced in the reign of Isabel II (1843–1868), firstly in cities, the Disposiciones de Zaragoza (1845) and the Reglamento para la represión de los excesos de la prostitución en Madrid (1847), followed by the 1848 Penal Code.[43]
The abolitionist debate reached Spain in 1877 and resulted in a debate among mainly men that ended in favor of the regulation system because of medical arguments.[44] In 1883, a deputy from the International Abolitionist Federation visited Spain to encourage the foundation of a Spanish section, but an organized Spanish abolitionist movement did not form until the foundation of the Sociedad Espanola del Abolicionismo [Spanish Society of Abolitionism] in Madrid by the doctors Hernandez-Sapelayo and Cesar Juarros in 1922.[45][46] However, in Spain abolition of regulationism was foremost promoted by the leftist and socialist political parties.[47]
During the Second Republic (1931–36), prostitution was prohibited in 1935. When the Dictatorship (1939–75) was established, this law was repealed (1941). Spain became officially abolitionist on 18 June 1962, when the 1949 United Nations (UN) Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others was ratified by Spain, and the Decree 168 of 24 January 1963 modified the Penal Code (Código Penal) according to the convention.
Sweden
The regulation system was introduced in Sweden in on a municipal level. In 1838, the municipal authorities of Stockholm attempted to control the spead of sexual diseases by copying the "French System", and issued permits to two brothels in the capital, London and Stadt Hamburg, who were allowed to operate on condition that its sex workers were to be subjected to regular health checks. [48] The experiment was however met with great impopularity in Sweden, were brothels had never been common, and both brothels were attacked by protestors and closed down by 1841.[49] Registered brothels were not to become a reality in Sweden, where prostitutes normally worked independently.
In 1847 the city of Stockholm mandated all women working as prostitutes to be subjected to regular health checks for sexual diseases, and in 1859 the regulation system was formally introduced in the city, mandating all prostitute women to be registered by the police, undergo regular health checks and be placed in a lock hospital if sick.[50] This was not a national law but a city law, but other several other cities followed Stockholm, and Sweden's second city of Gothenburg introduced the regulation in 1865.[51]
In 1878 the opposition to the system formed the Svenska Federationen, which campaigned for the abolition of the system.[52] The abolitionists called the system abusive to women and an illustration of a hypocritical sexual double standard. The issue was also raised during the 1880s Sedlighetsdebatten, a social debate criticizing the sexual double standards of the time.
In 1903 a state committee was formed and tasked by the Parliament to investigate an alternative method to prevent sexual disease; in 1910, the committee presented their conclusion,[53] and in 1918 the regulation system was finally abolished by the Lex Veneris law.[54]
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