Nothing To Be Ashamed Of
Just one of dozens of interesting passages in an 1858 letter from a prostitute to The Times. This was part of a public discussion — in which Charles Dickens was involved — on prostitution and the “rescue” of “fallen women”:
I speak of others as well as for myself, for the very great majority, nearly all the real undisguised prostitutes in London, spring from my class, and are made by and under pretty much such conditions of life as I have narrated, and particularly by untutored and unrestrained intercourse of the sexes in early life. We come from the dregs of society, as our so-called betters term it. What business has society to have dregs–such dregs as we? You railers of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, you the pious, the moral, the respectable, as you call yourselves, who stand on your smooth and pleasant side of the great gulf you have dug and keep between yourselves and the dregs, why don’t you bridge it over, or fill it up, and by some humane and generous process absorb us into your leavened mass, until we become interpenetrated with goodness like yourselves? What have we to be ashamed of, we who do not know what shame is — the shame you mean?
Found via a Susie Bright tweet — thanks!
Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=7854
Awfully well written for the dregs of society, wot?
If you follow the link, you’ll discover that the notables of the era spent some time wrangling about that. Dickens, at least, considered the letter real…
Some of the dregs became educated, and it’s consistent with the language of the time, and consistent with the thoughts of Fabian Socialists like George Bernard Shaw of the time. In fact, if you’ll read Pygmalion and its preface you will find that the play has underlying sentiments very much like those in the letter quoted here. After all, who would think a pretty young thing like Liza Doolittle could make a living selling flowers alone? In fact, when Liza’s father comes to see Professor Higgins, he just wants a few quid from Higgins to keep quiet, since he has assumed Higgins has taken his daughter as a mistress. And the whole topic of the play was what happens when you take someone like Liza and “absorb her into your leavened mass” as a member of respectable society.
The quote “We come from the dregs of society, as our so-called betters term it. What business has society to have dregs–such dregs as we?” sounds like straight-up Shaw, the rest is a little clumsy in its construction for Shaw.
But if you raise the standard of living, it still costs to become part of the middle class. Australia has the second highest standard of living atm, but I reckon the (legal) brothels around here still function.
It would be very interesting to see data on national economic health and the number of people working in Porn and/or Sex Work, I’d assume that as the larger economy improves, the number of women doing low-end sex work would decrease, but there might be an increase in high-end sex work. Of course for the sex workers, that’s probably a Good thing. I know that a number of prostitues are making Very good money running their own businesses out in the mining boom towns in Australia, they have their own limos or caravans, stuff like that.