Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Paris

Prostitution was a serious problem for nineteenth-century Europe: a threat to public health and public order and, at the same time, a prop to morality, allowing society to protect the purity of most women by sacrificing that of only a few. Jill Harsin examines the methods by which the police of Paris resolved the contradictions of this situation—an extralgal adminsitrative system involving the registration, regular medical examination, and periodic administrative detention of all working-cl...