Prostitution is the act or practice of giving sexual pleasure and or engaging in intercourse for monetary goods.

Prostitution in the Victorian Era

• Women needed/wanted money, so they provided pleasure
• Men captured women, kept them in their house for pleasure
• Poor women were not regarded in the Victorian society, could not fight back.

Incentive towards Prostitution

• Differences in social classes led some women to being ignored and unacknowledged in society
• For economic reasons and for the sexual pleasures of some men, prostitutes had no exit from prostitution

Prostitution In Victorian Society

• Prostitutes beaten, tortured by those who considered it as an evil
• Prostitution visible in Victorian Art and Literature
• Victorian Literature: Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Henry Ashbee’s My Secret Life, Thomas Hardy’s the Ruined made

Residence

• Most prostitutes lived on the “low streets” known for being unsanitary
• Regarded as nuisances and trash, had no rights

Contagious Diseases Act

• Created for protection of sailors and soldiers, whom were part of UK’s leading industries
• Increase in venereal diseases amongst prostitutes, sailors and soldiers worried majority of UK
• Women required to conduct regular checkups for diseases, kept at hospital until cured
• Women seen around ports and army bases were arrested

Jack the Ripper

• Name given to unknown serial killer, whose main targets were prostitutes
• Brutally murdered them, took out their organs, and sent some organs as proof to higher authorities
• Huge controversy in the Victorian era, people were scared of leaving their homes

• Known for slitting throats of prostitutes and for removing internal organs, possibly had surgical knowledge
• Was not caught although investigations were long and detailed
• Committed a lot of murders, most famous were 7 Whitechapel murders, contained around 1200 prostitutes

• Other sets of murders: Canonical Five and East End murders
• Also Wrote the letter “From Hell”