Sex work was an important activity in the French society (and not just in Paris) in the nineteenth century. This had been the case for a long time and regulating sex work had been a problem for authorities since at least the middle ages. In the 15th century, Louis IXXI's police was rounding up Parisian "amorous women with golden belts", jailing and fining them, with little to show for it. In the late eighteenth century (see here for a description of sex work in that period), new concerns about hygiene and policing led French authorities to develop a regulatory framework that would made sex work legal but also heavily constrained and monitored. The rationale was that prostitution, while being a social blight - moral (unsanctioned sexual activities) and physical (venereal diseases, notably syphilis) - was also necessary.

This idea was notably formulated in 1836 by Alexandre Parent-Duchatelet, a physician whose contributions to the development of public hygiene are nothing short of remarkable. One of Parent-Duchatelet's most effective work was done on the improvement of urban sewage systems. His other contribution was to the regulation of sex work. In both cases, he spent time with the people involved, interviewed them, and collected massive amounts of data and statistics, that he turned into tables and maps. For Parent-Duchatelet, prostitution performed a similar function as sewage systems: it was as necessary, and it had to be regulated as well.

Prostitutes are as unavoidable in an agglomeration of men as sewers, urban cesspits, and garbage dumps; the conduct of the authority must be the same with regard to the one as with regard to the other; its duty is to keep an eye on them, to mitigate by all possible means the inconveniences inherent in them, and for that purpose to conceal them, to relegate them to the most obscure corners, in a word, to render their presence as unnoticeable as possible.

Historian Alain Corbin has called this notion the égout séminal, the seminal gutter.

The idea of mandatory registration had emerged in the late 1700s and was implemented in 1802. Oversight was inexistent at first, but, by the 1820s, the process had become thoroughly bureaucratic. A candidate to prostitution had literally to apply for the job: she was interviewed by the police, had to provide identity papers, and undergo a medical examination. If she was a minor, the administration wrote to the mayor of her hometown to check that her parents agreed with her petition. The system theoretically ensured that all sex workers were registered, regularly tested for venereal diseases, subject to taxes, and that the police kept an eye on their whereabouts. Brothels were central to the system as their workers lived and worked there and were thus easy to monitor. Military brothels, run by madames/pimps under the authority of the French army, were a logical extension of the system: if the army could not prevent its soldiers from paying for sex, it could at least make sure that the sex workers they visited were "clean" and properly vetted.

Brothels were only the most visible part of the prostitutional system, which also included independent prostitutes working at home, bars and shops that were actually front-ends for prostitution, and establishments (maisons de rendez-vous) that provided "matchmaking" services and rooms for prostitutes and their clients. And, of course, registered prostitutes were only part of the general population of sex workers. Many of them refused to be registered as prostitution was often a temporary or side activity. Male prostitutes - and male brothels - also did not exist officially, though they were well known by the police. All those non-registered prostitutes - the insoumises - were a constant headache for authorities, since they were believed to carry diseases, were often on the move, and changed identities. The insoumises and male homosexual prostitutes were subject to police harassement and were regularly rounded up and sent to jail. One class of non-registered sex workers more or less escaped harassment: the courtesans (also cocottes or demi-mondaines) who worked for wealthy and/or famous patrons and benefited from their protection.

The sex working population catered to the whole range of sexual tastes and social classes, from the street-walking insoumise who plied her trade in the fortifs (the suburban shanty town surrounding Paris) to the wealthy courtesan intimate with politicians and businessmen. There were prostitutes for everyone, and they were wildly available and visible (something that Parent-Duchatelet did not foresee), not just in brothels, but also in shops, bars, cafes, brasseries, restaurants, dancing halls, theatres, operas etc. In high-class restaurants - such as Maxim's! -, VIP rooms where rich men could entertain their female friends in private were already a thing. Lesser establishments had backrooms (cabinets noirs) for the same purpose.

Prostitution changed during the century, with the brothel becoming less central to the system and sex work more diffuse. There were more than 200 brothels registered in Paris in the first decade of the nineteenth century, less than 150 in 1880, and about 50 at the turn of the century, typically "luxury" establishments that were also Parisian attractions (brothels were eventually banned in 1946). The brutal end of the Second Empire in 1870 also put an end to the "Imperial Feast" and its excesses. Courtesans were accused of having turned Paris into a brothel, and there was something of a puritan backlash. It did not last, but the times of the super-courtesans Paiva and Cora Pearl were over. By the end of the century the regulatory system was considered to be a failure and heavily criticized (there were also new concerns about trafficking). Paris remained a hotspot for sex tourism but the sexual landscape had changed.

It is important to note here that sociability in nineteenth century France was highly gendered. There was a clear separation between "honest" women - married women, widows, and nuns - and the rest. This was prescriptive - reality could be different - but still: one false step and a woman could end up in the "fallen" category. Feminist writer Olympe Audouard, who was definitely not a sex worker, was categorized as one by the police, even though her police file just described her as a pretty single woman who had lovers and lived a simple life. Honest women did not roam the streets freely without a proper companion, another woman or a man - husband or kin - and many places of entertainment were forbidden to them or accessible only under certain rules (such as having a box in a theatre). Men did not suffer from the same type of restrictions. As a result, mixed-gender spaces - the lively monde où l'on s'amuse (the world where people had fun) - were only available to men and to female companions who were not their wives, and who may or may not have been sex workers. Among those were stage artists - actresses, singers, dancers - and models, who often engaged in sex work to make ends meet, or because they were pressured into it by theatre managers, fellow male artists, or "admirers". Even the world-famous actress Sarah Bernhardt - herself the daughter and sister of prostitutes - supplemented her stage revenue through paying customers. And then there were women who were primarily sex workers and who took to the stage, both for extra revenue and for publicity. One of the most prominent courtesan of the turn of the century, Liane de Pougy, was something of a multimedia star: a cocotte with wealthy clients, she also did pantomime, wrote best-sellers, and ran her own magazine.

The "bohemian" crowd of painters, writers, and musicians, as well as businessmen and politicians, were in constant interactions with these women who, more often than not, were their mistresses: that sex workers are well represented in nineteenth-century art and literature is thus not surprising. Still, this "artistic" focus should not hide the fact that prostitution in nineteenth century France was normalized in a way that does indeed seem alien today.

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