10. In Victorian Britain, prostitution was almost everywhere, and in London, there were women to suit every taste, kink – and budget
Prostitution wasn’t just hidden on the edges of society in Victorian England. It was almost everywhere, especially in London and other big cities. According to some estimates, there might have been as many as 80,000 working girls working in the city of London alone by the late-1890s. This was partly thanks to the Industrial Revolution. As machines took over the jobs of unskilled laborers and pushed wages down, large numbers of women were made destitute – and they had little option but to sell their bodies in order to survive.
Another contributing factor was the Church’s teaching on fornication. Quite simply, it wasn’t supposed to be enjoyable. That meant many men went looking for women who could fulfill their desires and were willing to pay for it. Richer men could afford high-end mistresses and enjoy discreet liaisons in townhouses. However, most men would simply solicit the services of so-called ‘park whores’. As their name suggests, these impoverished women would offer their services for low prices, with brief liaisons taking place in public parks, usually after dark. Again, this meant that prostitution seemed to be everywhere in the cities and nobody could be blind to its prevalence.
