Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Introduction: Criminalizing Commercial Sex

   • Julia Laite

   Pages 1-23

3. Selling Sex: Women, Work and Prostitution

   • Julia Laite

   Pages 24-42

4. Buying Sex: Men and the Marketplace

   • Julia Laite

   Pages 43-53

5. The Crusade Begins: The Criminal Law Amendment Act and London’s ‘Brothels’ before the First World War

   • Julia Laite

   Pages 54-69

6. Women in Public and Public Women: Controlling Street Prostitution 1887–1914

   • Julia Laite

   Pages 70-86

7. ‘Down on Whores’ and ‘Living on the Earnings’: Violence, Vulnerability and the Law after 1885

   • Julia Laite

   Pages 87-99

8. White Slaves and Alien Prostitutes: Trafficking, Protection and Punishment in the Early Twentieth Century

   • Julia Laite

   Pages 100-115

9. Making War, Taking Fingerprints and Challenging the Law: Policy Changes and Public Debates after 1914

   • Julia Laite

   Pages 116-134

10. Behind Closed Doors: Off-Street Commercial Sex in the Interwar Years

    • Julia Laite

    Pages 135-148

11. Sex, War and Syndication: Organized Prostitution and the Second World War

    • Julia Laite

    Pages 149-170

12. The Shame of London: Prostitution and Panic in the Post-war Metropolis

    • Julia Laite

    Pages 171-190

13. Risking the Dangers: Reconsidering Commercial Sex in ‘Permissive Britain’

    • Julia Laite

    Pages 191-211

14. Conclusion

    • Julia Laite

    Pages 212-222

15. Back Matter

    Pages 223-299

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Between 1885 and 1960, laws and policies designed to repress prostitution dramatically shaped London's commercial sex industry. This book examines how laws translated into street-level reality, explores how women who sold sex experienced criminalization, and charts the complex dimensions of the underground sexual economy in the modern metropolis.

• 20th century
• bibliography
• Britain
• crusades
• design
• experience
• knowledge
• law
• living
• policy
• Polis
• slaves
• twentieth century
• violence
• women

JULIA LAITE Lecturer in Modern British History at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. She has published several articles on prostitution in Britain and is presently researching women's migration, sexual labour, and human trafficking in the twentieth century world.

Policies and ethics