The prevention and reform of prostitution in Victorian England Essay

The prevention and reform of prostitution in Victorian England - Essay Example in Burns). Enduring the pains of poverty, these women found themselves incapable of reconciling with Victorian ideals of purity and get into prostitution. For them, earning for a living was more immediate and harsh reality (Cooper 6).However, society and state always put considerable efforts to curb and regulate the practice. The paper discusses different forms of regulations and reforms that were implemented to prevent prostitution in Victorian England. During Victorian age, England experiences economic and social issues which were accompanied by industrialization (Haggard qtd. in Burns).The paternalistic Victorian society was inclined towards wealth accumulation in the form of property and was rigidly divided into classes. Wealth was concentrated in a small upper-class who was ignorant of poverty and poor. Victorians had puritanical conscience when it came to gender and sexuality (Pearson 11). Men and women owned entirely different spheres of society. Public sphere belonged to men while women belonged to private sphere or home(Anderson 13).Those who were outside private spheres were considered public property. According to Rubinstein, absence of factory work, dock and construction workers, sailor population on shore, immigrants and slumming city male experienced women entering into prostitution as profession (11 qtd. in Burns).Economic insecurity compelled even the married women to work as prostitutes during low times of their seasonal works 1(Cooper 30). 1. Major Causes of Prostitution It is often believed that the men who seduced and urged women to get into prostitution were upper-class male and victims (girls) were either very poor or their domestic servants. However, Bartley argues that such ideas of seduction are not more than myth (4).Some stress that men enticed young girls with money and or toys or procured them from brothels by convincing them that they will help in entering the domestic service. Reformers believed that female child between the ages of eleven to fifteen were either kidnapped or lured into prostitution; approximately four hundred men earned their livelihood by doing this. However Bartley doubts any of such causes of prostitution because he asserts they lack evidence, he asserts that most of the girls were convinced by other girls in the trade (4).Drinking is also closely linked with the practice because it lowers the moral values and most women were considered to be drunk when commit it first time. Rescue workers, missionaries, magistrates, policemen, law officials, and reform workers believed that there were complex social, psychological, economic factors are involved, in addition to the idea that prostitutes were the victims of social injustice and male sexual profligacy (Bartley 5).Religious reformers believed in training and reforming girls who repent. They also strengthened the repeal movements (McHugh 187).Numerous evidences; however, confirm poverty and economic reasons as the major contributing factor to prostitution. For instance, a prostitute known as ‘Swindling Sal’ reveals the reason of her coming into prostitut