Prostitution has been an important part of public and
private life from earliest times. Yet it has remained on the fringes, a forbidden aspect of human sexual behaviour. This revealing book provides a candid and engrossing history of 'the oldest profession'. It sets out to examine the private and working lives of prostitutes from the back streets of ancient Rome to the very different circumstances of more recent times.
More than just a vivid, anecdotal history it enquires into both the social causes and functions of prostitution. The existence of prostitution, it is argued, does not carry on in spite of the moral strictures of marriage, but because of them! In addition to a thorough chronicle of vice, George Ryley Scott boldly addresses such absorbing moral panics as the 'white slave trade', the much vaunted object of abolitionist's campaigns.