Crimes and Misdemeanors: Who Exploits Who - Part 1

Prostitution had become a problem in Victorian London but, around this type of "business", a dense network of "induced work" labourers was formed that was fueled by giving jobs and offering opportunities to lost girls. A dense criminal network with its rules.

First of all, we establish the hierarchy of "adult entertainment industry workers".

The top of the pyramid of power was occupied by the "Keepers". They were usually women (Madam), though men could occupy this position at times, who were dealing with managing and keeping a brothel. The Keepers were good at controlling prostitutes through a mix of intimidation, blackmail, and brute force. They were attracting girls to work for them by doping the innocent people who fell into their hands, sending people to look for young women to encourage them to go to the enclosed brothel. Many girls were foreigners who were induced to travel to England or from angling elsewhere. They were kidnapped, drugged and raped while unconscious, and then they were given to a brothel where the language difficulties and their "decayed status" convinced many of these girls that there was no other chance to undertake this lifestyle.

For these girls, brothels were more a prison than an opportunity to exercise their jobs. They were usually not allowed to leave the house, and on the few occasions that this was granted to them, they were usually followed by a "stalker" of some kind. Usually, these stalkers were old prostitutes who, for food and lodging, performed humble work in the house and looked at the new levers when they went out.

In short, few went to the brothels for their choice and even less abandoned it.

The "licentious houses" often worked as brothels and as lodging-houses. In a nutshell, a man could both carry his prostitute with himself and pay only for the use of a room, that simply chose a girl in the house.

Another typical trick of the time was to give good clothes to prostitutes in exchange for a small percentage of their income. The "rent clothes", as they were called these prostitutes, lived in houses very similar to brothels. The owner of the house provided girls with those clothes they could never afford. The girls then beat the streets in search of men to return to the house where they would pay for the use of the room. Essentially, the house earned both the prostitute's performance and the rent of the room. Prostitutes, in return, benefited from being more attractive for quality customers than those who could afford if they had worked with their clothes.

To make sure that the "rent clothes" habit did not bring profits to the house going elsewhere, these girls were also followed by prepared staff. Like stalkers, these poor people who followed the prostitutes in their walks had the task of verifying that the girls went back home to practice and be active in their business. In fact, there were penalties for those who did not respect the rules and/or did not work.

Many of the "Trackers", like the same prostitutes, were often heavily dependent on alcohol. They spent all they gained in gin and tried to spend as much time as possible by drinking. For this reason, Trackers had to be very careful to prevent one of the girls from escaping to sell the dress or earning money independently.

The last form of this type of business was renting rooms - a person who offered rooms, usually for an hour, in exchange for money. So there were places that could remind the dreary motels of contemporary times. Although the rent of rooms did not necessarily involve the use of prostitutes, a form of collaboration was often present. Often customers were looking for entertainment and often prostitutes were looking for a place to work. Although the revenue from this activity was lower than the competition, the costs were also reduced as owners did not have to provide girls and meals. There are, of course, huge profits for the time ranging from 2 to 10 £ per night. The price of the rooms depended on the size, the floor and the amenities. Sometimes it was only long benches where people could sit and rest for a few hours. By the time many prostitutes exploited this type of service "free" by fleeing before paying the service. This prompted the owners to increase prices and adopt customer constraint methods (ropes or chains) to avoid this kind of leakage or that someone else would take their place.

Below this level we might call the brothel managers, we can find protectors, prosecutors and pimps. But we will look at them soon.