PROSTITUTION LINK BETWEEN ALCOHOL AND DRINKING ESTABLISHMENTS

The link between wine, women, song, and sin has its origins in the mists of human history. Poets have celebrated and moralists condemned these connections. Only recently, however, have historians, anthropologists, and sociologists started to explore the dimensions across time, space, and ambiance. These last two categories are central to the study of the relationship between prostitution and drinking establishments. The central questions are: How often has drinking been involved in prostitution, and how often has prostitution occurred in various types of drinking establishments? Exploring the spatial and emotional aspects of prostitution provides a key to unlocking the historical and sociological dynamics of a profession often considered “the world’s oldest.”

Across history almost all societies have recognized the importance of this link. The Chicago Vice Commission at the turn of the 20th century merely echoed the sentiments of political, religious, and medical moralizers connecting prostitution and drinking establishments. After the brothel, the Chicago Vice Commission noted, the most important space of prostitution was “the  saloon, and the most important financial interest, next to the business of prostitution, was the liquor interest. As a contributory influence to immorality and the business of prostitution there  is no interest so dangerous and so powerful in the City of Chicago.” The Vice Commission then listed other nefarious connections between saloons and prostitution: prostitutes frequented saloons and also recruited young women in these drinking establishments; the entertainment, the “popular ragtime songs with indecent parodies” of the era, added to the allure for the young women; and the “abnormal” profits (180 percent on beer, 300 percent on liquor) on the alcohol sold in connection with prostitution made drinking establishment prostitution attractive to the liquor trade at the retail and wholesale level. The report concluded that the brothel and saloon were virtually identical. “Instances have been found, where prostitutes actually live in rooms over the saloon … in much the same way as inmates appear in the parlors of regular houses of prostitution …. Many saloons are actually houses of prostitution.” Not surprisingly, the commission recommended that it was necessary “absolutely to divorce the sale of liquor from prostitution” (Connelly 1980, p. 95–96).

However, most prostitution in history has occurred outside of bordellos and has been  clandestine. It would seem likely that much clandestine prostitution throughout history has been connected either to drink or to drinking establishments. But, this is not the case. Few systematic studies have been done on the relationship between prostitution and drinking establishments for several reasons. First, most commercial sex in drinking establishments was clandestine and thus appeared only in police reports rather than in laws. In general police reports do not survive across history to anywhere near the frequency of laws and regulations. Second, the more general relationship between drink and venal sexuality often took place within the context of festivity and recreation, a form of human activity this is usually enjoyed rather than recorded. Third, the fact of commercial sex in drinking and eating establishmentsor wherever alcoholic beverages are being consumed undermines a dichotomy most societies have wanted to preserve: between the “virtuous” and “fallen” woman, and between areas or districts of “vice” and “virtue” in society. As a result, almost every society has relegated the records and story of clandestine prostitution to the periphery. Even the question of alcohol consumption and drunkenness in houses of prostitution has been only schematically covered, as it is seen to be peripheral to the main narrative.

Although few historians have systematically explored the links between prostitution and drinking establishments, what they have discovered is important. For example, Judith Walkowitz, in her classic Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State (1980), explored the possibility that women engaged in sex work in drinking establishments had a greater amount of autonomy vis-à-vis their clients and solidarity among themselves during the 1860s and 1870s, a time during which formal brothels were in decline and before prostitution in public houses faced severe and systematic repression. Although Walkowitz found more initiative and solidarity among English prostitutes than did historians studying other cities and countries during the 19th century, the point nevertheless seems to be that drinking establishments did have a profound effect on the nature of the trade. This was true both for the sex workers and their customers. Along with the question of autonomy, studying prostitution in relation to drink and drinking establishments provides a way to explore the rituals of seduction and pleasure in which prostitution was imbricated. Exploring the relationship between prostitution and drink also permits an interrogation of the relationship between public and private lives, especially the relationships between work, family, and recreation, and the degree to which sex workers and their clients believed the relationship to be a one-dimensional sexual transaction or whether it could lead to some sort of ongoing relationship.

Despite gaps in the archives and the scholarly literature, an outline of the overall evolution of relations between prostitution and drinking establishments can be sketched. Fear of virtually all types of sexual immorality in drinking establishments can be found from the origins of human civilization, for instance, in Hammurabbi’s law code in ancient Mesopotamia. Prostitutes were a common sight at the banquets and festivals in ancient Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Greek courtesans, the haetarae, are especially famous for their central role in the banquets (symposia) of Athens and other ancient Greek city-states. An analogous function in Asian society has been preformed across the centuries by what is called in Japan a geisha. Similar functions for upper-class prostitutes (courtesans) can be found in the ancient societies of Africa and the Americas. The almost universal development of the bordello or the harem across cultures was almost certainly tied to the use of various types of alcoholic drinks, although this seemingly obvious constant has never been systematically studied or even addressed in the general studies of prostitution.

The relationship between prostitution and the ambiance of drink became especially obscure in Europe during the Middle Ages because of the decline of cities and the resulting decline in literacy and record keeping. The relationship between prostitution and drinking establishments only returned when these preeminently urban institutions reappeared after 1000 A.D. across Europe. Brothels in medieval European cities were linked with taverns, bath houses, and rowdy and drunken behavior. Western European society was exceptionally tolerant of prostitution and drinking the century after the onset of the Black Death (the bubonic plague after 1350) and the coming of the stricter moralities of the Renaissance and Reformation periods and a crisis in the European economy. This brief age of toleration and license lasted roughly from 1400 to 1500. After 1800, the trend was for prostitution to branch out from the house of prostitution to hotels, cafés, dance halls, concerts, and music halls, and the streets. Such a move on the part of registered prostitutes merely increased the amount of clandestine commercial sex already occurring in drinking and eating establishments. Often in times of economic downturn or personal economic emergency, poor working women would turn to prostitution to survive. In some instances, what started as a venal affair would end in marriage. This was not at all surprising because, for most women, prostitution stemmed from desperate circumstances rather than some innate predisposition. Nevertheless, the notion of the “born prostitute” became popular in the late 19th century because of the highly influential eugenics theories of Italian criminologist Caesare Lombroso, and this notion was embraced by politicians, police forces, and scholars across the Western world.

The most indelible images and insightful comments on this trend of prostitution in public places come from the world of literature and especially art. The French novelist Jean Karol Huysmans, who became notorious for his depictions of various types of unusual sexuality, noted how late 19th-century Parisian men desired to create the illusion in cafés, beer, or concert halls that they were making love rather than buying sex. The world of the café contained so many different types of encounters that this illusion could be more fully sustained than in any bordello. Late 19th-century painting is filled with images of prostitutes and drinking establishments by artists such as Edouard Manet, James McNeil Whistler, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent Van Gough, and Pablo Picasso.

One of the most powerful statements is in Manet’s “Bar” at the Folies Bergère (1881–82). This painting, particularly the complexity of the woman’s face behind the counter and the ambiguity and anticipation it contains, has inspired numerous interpretations and continuing and abundant commentary. Manet captures this woman at the very moment when the possibility of a sexual overture is about to be made. Amidst the bright lights and the gaudy and multicolored bottles of alcohol, the viewer is witness to the ambiguous adventure of drink and prostitution. Is the woman selling more than just a drink and what could this lead to? Paris often became the paradigm for leisure, entertainment, nightlife, and sophisticated prostitution around the world. For example, by the early 20th century, Havana was often referred to as the “Paris of the Caribbean”; Guatemala City was given that title for Central America; Buenos Aires for South America; Beirut for the Arab world; and Bangkok for East Asia. Each of these cities had its own distinctive set of cafés and music halls in which a seductive and sophisticated prostitution has flourished.

The rise of sex tourism and the emergence of AIDS have made the study of the relationship between prostitution and drinking establishments vital. Thailand’s commercial sex bar scene for foreign tourists has been especially well studied by scholars and has been covered in the controversial novel by the contemporary French novelist Michel Houllebecq (Platform, 2001). In general, it has been found that the move from the bordello to the drinking establishment has led to a decline in the transmission of AIDS. Among African truckers, it has been found that sexual encounters along the truck routes have not led to a spread of the disease among the local populations. The continuing relevance of the relationship between prostitution and drinking establishments stems from the dramatic and ongoing growth of cities. As cities continue to grow, from Shanghai, to Calcutta, to Ibadan, to Rio de Janeiro, so will the number of bars and prostitutes in them. The rise of the AIDS virus, however, has complicated attempts to alleviate poverty and achieve upward mobility. Understanding the sexual networks of such bars will be important in the ongoing fight against AIDS.

By W. Scott Haine in "Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work", edited by Melissa Hope Ditmore, Greenwood Press,2006, excerpts pp.16-19. Adapted and edited to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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