City Introductions Prostitution in Riga City Ineta Lipša University of Latvia. 191 Historical overview From 1710 to 1795 the area of present-day Latvia gradually passed into the Russian Empire as its Baltic Provinces (Provinces of Livland and Courland) and as a part of the Province of Vitebsk (Latgallia). Russia legalized prostitution in the nineteenth century and introduced an administrative system to regulate it, with the aim of restricting the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Riga had already become part of the Russian Empire in 1710 during the Great Northern War (1700 1721), fought between Russia and Sweden. In 1843 an instruction was issued establishing a Medical Police Committee in Riga. Prostitutes in brothels and those working alone were registered by the police, were issued tickets instead of a passport and were required to undergo a police medical checkup once a week. In 1847 there were five brothels in Riga; by the early 1880s there were nine, and by 1891 there were 35. In the 1890s the number of brothels in Riga decreased: there were 23 in 1899, only one of which was in the city centre. At the close of the nineteenth century brothels were officially recognized as institutions necessary to the residents of Riga and serving their welfare. In 1899 the register of prostitutes working in brothels listed 768 women, along with 356 registered individually. In terms of background, they came from the lowest strata of the population: the peasantry and petty bourgeoisie. All the different ethnic groups of Riga were represented among the prostitutes: in 1897, 35 per cent of them were German, 22 per cent Russian, 15 per cent Latvian, 14 per cent Polish, 7 per cent Estonian, 1 per cent Jewish and 6 per cent from other ethnic groups. More than half of the prostitutes in Riga, however, were foreigners, i.e. born outside the Baltic Provinces. The services of foreign prostitutes were more highly valued. When in 1898 the Riga Medical Police Committee issued a prohibition against hiring foreign prostitutes in the city s brothels, the numbers of people frequenting brothels fell and demand increased for foreign prostitutes working individually. A year later the committee rescinded the order. Right up to the First World War, Riga served as a point of transit for foreign prostitutes from France, Germany, Poland and other countries to the major cities of Russia. At the end of the nineteenth century, Riga was, in terms of the number of workers, the third largest industrial city of the Russian Empire. Moreover, Riga was also a port city, which had the effect of increasing the scale of prostitution during the navigation season. On the eve of the First World War there were about 15 brothels in Riga, with about 2,000 registered prostitutes, working in brothels as well as independently. Warfare began in the territory of Latvia during the summer of 1915, when part of it was invaded by German forces; that meant that the brothels then served the needs of the soldiers, and military doctors were made responsible for sanitary policing. The remaining part of Latvia, including Riga, remained under Russian control. Starting from the autumn of 1915, the (tsarist) police tried to deport the registered prostitutes to Inner Russia, and closed all the brothels, thus driving prostitution underground.
TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN 1924-1926 The Paul Kinsie Reports for the League of Nations VOL. II 192. After the Revolution of February 1917 in the Russian Empire the regulation on prostitution was revoked. Later in the year Riga was taken by the Germans, and their administration set up the morality police, re-establishing the regulation of prostitution. For some months in 1917, as well as in 1918 and 1919 a small part of Latvia was under Soviet rule, and in that area the regulation of prostitution was abolished and brothels prohibited. Societal reaction and legal situation The residents of the Republic of Latvia, established after the First World War, had experienced a variety of legislative frameworks regulating prostitution. Up to 1921 (after the War for Independence, 1918 1920) there was a state of war in the country, and accordingly the first Regulations on the Suppression of Venereal Disease, in early 1920, were approved by the commander-in-chief of the Latvian army, continuing the regulation of prostitution that had existed in the former Russian Empire. Even though the title of the regulations laid emphasis on fighting venereal disease, it was essentially aimed at combating prostitution. Women engaged in prostitution were to register with a police authority and undergo a medical examination twice a week. Each time, the doctor would record the condition of the prostitute in a health control document, which had a photograph, but did not give her name. Women who engaged in prostitution and evaded the system were described as illegal, unregistered or secret prostitutes. According to the regulations, only a woman who had reached adulthood could open a brothel, subject to permission from the house owner, the local authority and the police. A brothel could employ prostitutes registered with the police from the age of 18. A prostitute not belonging to a brothel could only work in the flat in which she was registered as living. After the state of war was abolished, new temporary regulations were issued in the autumn of 1921 by the Minister of the Interior. Certain changes were introduced: in order to open a brothel, written permission from the owners of five immediately adjacent houses had to be submitted. The age of majority for prostitutes was changed from 18 to 21. The temporary regulations also set down in detail the rights of prostitutes: the madams running brothels were not allowed to charge the prostitutes more than 60 per cent of what they earned; prostitutes had the right to rent a flat individually; they were not permitted to live in hotels, serviced apartments or inns. Under those regulations, municipal authorities had to decide on whether to permit brothels, but for several years the executive board of the City of Riga did not succeed in exercising that right. In the area around the brothels on Grāvju Street (present-day Valguma Street) there was public disorder and even brawling. For that reason, the City s Executive Board decided in autumn 1920 to close down the brothels in Riga, and requested the Riga Prefecture of Police to carry out that instruction up to the end of 1920. The Prefecture did not implement the decision, even though Grāvju Street became a problem zone. In early 1921 the owners of the brothels themselves asked the Prefecture to protect them against bands of soldiers, sailors and cavalrymen who were instigating fights and robbing other clients. The Prefecture did not, however, close down the brothels. In the summer of 1922 there were still six brothels operating in Riga, all of them on Grāvju Street, employing about 30 to 40 prostitutes. Disturbed neighbours, among whom were also pastors of surrounding churches and employees of educational institutions, demanded that the decision by the executive board to close the brothels
City Introductions be implemented. A petition was signed by more than a thousand persons from the surrounding area. By the end of the summer of 1922 the Minister of the Interior decided to shut down the brothels, but they were actually abolished only in early 1923. The women resident in them were allowed to continue living as tenants in serviced apartments. They continued working, and the customers continued brawling.. 193 At the beginning of 1924 residents and house owners reminded the Prime Minister that the brothels on Grāvju Street were still operating in secret, disturbing the peace of the residents at night. In a letter to the prefecture, the prostitutes asked for permission to continue earning money in the same place by engaging in a profession that the law does not prohibit. 1 The Department of Health of the Ministry of the Interior, however, instructed the Riga Prefecture of Police to resettle the prostitutes from the houses on Grāvju Street to the urban fringe by 1 June, with no more than two prostitutes in the same street. In order to obtain permission to continue living on Grāvju Street, a delegation from the prostitutes went to the Ministry, bringing a petition signed by a few dozen tenants. They explained that in other parts of the city they would be unable to rent flats, would not obtain other employment and would thus be forced to become criminal vagrants. At the same time, representatives of the house owners asked for the prostitutes to be evicted from their flats on Grāvju Street. That was carried out in accordance with the plan put forward by the Department of Health. Prostitution was a legal activity in the Republic of Latvia if the regulations were complied with. Under the Punitive Laws of 22 March 1903 the penalty for breaking the regulations was imprisonment or a fine of up to 500 lati. The penalty for public indecency in the form of uncouth language or indecent behaviour was up to one month of imprisonment or a fine of up to 100 lati. If the indecent behaviour took the form of licentious or other immoral activity involving obscenity towards others, then the guilty person was to be punished by imprisonment for up to six months. Public opinion condemned prostitution not only because it was regarded as the cause of venereal disease. Public communication of prostitutes with passers-by while looking for potential clients was unacceptable to the residents. From time to time the residents would express their dissatisfaction with the state of public order in the city centre, and anonymous experts would occasionally recommend that brothels be opened on the outskirts of Riga. No more brothels were, however, opened in Riga. In fact, in line with a recommendation from the League of Nations, from 1927 the Minister of the Interior prohibited brothels in all of Latvia, with the idea that that would also resolve the problem of trafficking in white female slaves. The International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children was adopted by the Latvian parliament in 1923, when it also signed the conventions of 1904 and 1910. The Board of Criminal Police functioned as the centre for the suppression of traffic in women and children in Latvia. Up to the beginning of the 1930s, however, the Board had not recorded a single case of trafficking in white slaves. It was mainly information in the press about the activities of the League of Nations that maintained the narrative of white slavery in Latvia, from time to time stimulating people to look out for something of that kind at home. In the mid-1920s, Jews emigrating from Soviet Russia through 1 Netiklības nami (Brothels), Jaunākās Ziņas (The latest news), 21 January 1924.
TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN 1924-1926 The Paul Kinsie Reports for the League of Nations VOL. II 194. Latvia to Argentina and Brazil were cast in the role of enticers, luring women away, and it was asserted that they were placing their beautiful companions in brothels. Latvia s Board of Criminal Police had indicated that that was false, and moreover such cases of actual or attempted enticement had not taken place in Latvia for some time. When in 1926 the League of Nations organized a survey with the aim of collecting statistics on enticers and seducers, the press wrote about purported attempts to entice white slaves. In 1928 the head of the Board reported that no cases had been recorded in Latvia relating to the international traffic in women and children. There was no change in the situation in the 1930s. Organization of the trade A brothel functioned as a leisure establishment offering alcoholic drinks, music and dancing in the company of women, who also offered sexual relations for money. In addition, some of them had live music instead of a gramophone, as in a restaurant, showing that the madams running brothels were seeking to provide a milieu that men from particular social groups found attractive. The women running brothels were often dubbed in the press as traders in living goods, exploiters of white slaves, madams, procurers or brothel keepers. Male procurers were only mentioned a few times, being referred to as tomcats or as common-law husbands. Brothel keepers had to maintain public order, i.e. they had to make sure that the prostitutes did not lean out of the windows, walk the streets in groups or invite passers-by to visit. Card games as well as the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks were banned in brothels, and juveniles were not allowed to enter them. Obtrusive, licentious or indecent behaviour in public by men or women was prohibited. The brothels formed part of 1920s leisure culture, especially in the early 1920s, when they were frequented mainly by soldiers, testifying to a kind of exit from the war. After the closing of Riga s brothels in 1924, the trade in sex relations became more conspicuous, because the prostitutes from the brothels then supplemented the sex workers already working in the city centre. A prostitute seeking customers on the street had to observe certain unwritten rules. Thus, she was allowed to walk down the street, but not to loiter. The first time a policeman met a prostitute in the street, he would warn her that she must not meet him again, and if she did, then her health control book would be confiscated and she would be taken to the police station. Prostitutes detained for loitering would be released the next morning. On weekday evenings a policeman might detain up to 30 prostitutes, but fewer on Saturday and Sunday evenings, because then they would seek out customers at various entertainment events. Prostitutes also made use of serviced apartments, inns, hotels, tea rooms, bars and suchlike establishments. Demography and causes of prostitution Compared with the situation in 1914, before the outbreak of the First World War, when there were about 2,000 prostitutes registered in Riga, in the 1920s and 1930s the number of registered prostitutes was comparatively small, varying from 302 prostitutes in 1922 to 589 in 1932. The highest level 589 registered prostitutes refers to 1932, the year of greatest economic hardship during the interwar years in Latvia, which was hard hit by the world economic crisis. One of the reasons for the big fall in the number of registered prostitutes was the significant reduction in the
City Introductions scale of industry in Riga: in 1915 about 90 per cent of machinery and power sources were evacuated to Russia, never to be regained by the Latvian state. Thus demand for prostitution fell significantly.. 195 The prostitutes in Riga came from various ethnic groups. Judging from the data given in the preserved card index of Riga prostitutes (1920 1932) of 472 women, the majority were ethnic Latvians (55 per cent), in addition to which 15 per cent were Russian, 8 per cent Polish, 6 per cent German, 6 per cent Jewish and 4 per cent Lithuanian. They had, most commonly, previously been employed as workers (26 per cent), servants (13 per cent), seamstresses (9 per cent) or housekeepers (8 per cent). In the 1930s the majority of Riga prostitutes (59 per cent) had become involved in prostitution because of unemployment and hardship. The First World War had brought about a change in the public s perception of prostitution, with the addition of the prostitute viewed as a victim of the revolution. Public opinion in the 1920s regarded prostitution as a serious social problem because of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, which needed to be addressed by the new state and its administrative structures. A sociological approach dominated in the discourse on the causes of prostitution. The First Congress of Latvian Physicians in 1925 passed a resolution on the issue of prostitution, emphasizing its social origins. In 1923 the White Cross Society for the Suppression of Prostitution opened a hospice and workshop for fallen women and women under moral threat in Riga, unemployment being regarded as the main cause of prostitution.
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