June 2, by Maggie McNeill. Contrary to the perceptions of Americans and others, the French have been unusually intolerant of lower-class prostitution for centuries.
Since they catered to the needs of the upper class, courtesans were naturally ignored; it was only the whores who were available to the middle and lower classes who were suppressed.
Brothels owned by poorer madams managed to stay open by bribing the police with money and sexβ¦and I need not tell you that venerable system is still alive in many countries to this day. Things went on like this for over years, until the Revolution and its consequent social upheavals drove huge numbers of women into prostitution for survival.
The only way to avoid all this was to work in one of the maisons closes , but they were just as bad because one of the conditions for a license was that any cop had unrestricted access to any occupant of such a house at all times. Furthermore, the police demanded such huge bribes and fees from the madams that they in turn had to extract more money from the girls.
This was the soil from which the modern pimp first sprung; since men could move about freely, they could seek clients for women who wanted to steer clear of the police. But while the moral crusaders of America and Britain imagined they could completely abolish prostitution, the French would not succumb to that delusion for several generations yet. Thus the public believed that the regulation system had ended, when in fact it had merely become sneakier.
