The Five

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by Hallie Rubenhold


  Servants were not allowed to enter beer houses or spend a night outside of their master’s home without permission; they had virtually no opportunity to form relationships with members of the opposite sex outside their household or immediate community. Their interactions with servants from the homes of their employer’s friends and family, or with other workers, such as grocers, butchers, bakers, and those making deliveries, were brief (though often flirtatious and familiar). Their encounters with the men of the house were, by contrast, frequent. Young women, like Elisabeth, who lived cheek by jowl with the family who employed her could be as much a temptation to the male members of the household as they were to her. For men of all ages, sexual liaisons with a servant, who would have intimate knowledge of his habits, who may have made his bed, washed his clothes, and filled his baths, were considered commonplace occurrences. Whether or not she encouraged the advances of the master or his son, his brother, his cousin, his friend, or his father, there were plenty of opportunities to find oneself alone, to be coerced, overpowered, or to give in to mutual desire.

  Service was believed to be the making of a young working-class woman’s character, yet a sexual entanglement with a man beneath her master’s roof tended to be the undoing of it. Such relationships were regularly cited as being among the factors that drew women into lives of prostitution: “the housemaid of a pharmacist or a surgeon might be seduced by her master’s assistant; a lodging-house maid by a student, a commercial traveler or officer; . . . a hotel servant by a regular guest; a young clerk might seduce his parents’ servant-girl,” and so forth.1 Often, the young woman’s lover would promise to look after her, and many made good on their word, establishing her as his mistress in lodgings, perhaps a single room or an entire house, depending upon his resources. Some lived alongside their paramour, together posing as a married couple; others visited only on occasion. Some relationships continued for many years, or even a lifetime, but many more fell apart within weeks or months. While the nineteenth-century double standard enabled men to walk away from such attachments, it often devastated the lives of the women, who were left to bear the crying and gurgling consequences.

  Elisabeth has taken to her grave the name of the man who altered the course of her life with his lust. It will be never be known whether her first encounter with him was consensual or forced, where it occurred, and under what circumstances. All that is certain is that through April 1865, she continued to describe herself as a servant, though her name cannot be found in the Gothenburg censuses. A likely explanation is that she did not remain long in her new position as maid before taking up lodgings with or paid for by a lover. In such cases, the regular practice was to conceal the true nature of the relationship by assuming a lover’s surname, becoming, for however short a period, his wife, for propriety’s sake.

  In Gothenburg, maintaining a semblance of respectability while living in sin was done not merely to convince the landlord and the neighbors of one’s good character, but also to hide from the law and the suspicions of the police. Until 1864, extramarital sex and illegitimate pregnancy had been punishable by law. Additionally, in 1859 a law regulating prostitution in the city had been introduced to quell the spread of venereal disease, specifically syphilis. The new legislation was a threat to any woman living in a potentially compromising situation.

  In this large port city, with a growing population of over 100,000 and foreign ships dropping anchor daily along the Göta River, the authorities were greatly concerned about how easily this debilitating illness could be communicated through the civilian population and spread through the military. Sweden took its cue from other European nations, such as France and Germany; when faced with a similar threat, they instituted a series of strict laws designed to regulate the sex trade and ensure that the women who practiced within it were not carriers of disease. Britain too saw the benefits of introducing such measures in its port towns, and in 1864 passed the first of its Contagious Diseases Acts.

  While the methods of enforcing regulation varied between countries, the concept that they all shared in common was that women in the sex trade should shoulder the blame for the transmission of syphilis. It was believed that if the state could control the morally corrupt “fallen woman,” the instrument of the disease’s spread, then the problem could be isolated. The male carrier was exempt from any such regulation. In Gothenburg, as in Stockholm, Paris, Hamburg, Berlin, and other cities throughout Europe, women in the sex trade were required to register their names and addresses with the police and submit to regular gynecological examinations to ensure they were free of disease. However, determining who exactly should be placed on this roll was down entirely to the whim of the prostitution police patrolling various neighborhoods. Many women who were forced to enlist themselves were not selling sex, but were suspected of what the police described as “lecherous living.”2 According to the historian Yvonne Svanström, Gothenburg’s system employed two separate lists, one consisting of the names of acknowledged prostitutes and the other comprising pregnant single women, women frequently seen alone with men, or out at night, and those living as a man’s mistress.

  The police and Elisabeth’s neighbors may have had suspicions about her for some time, but by March 1865, they became fairly certain that she was guilty of “lecherous living.” She was then six months pregnant and could no longer hide her condition. Whoever had got her into that condition was no longer present to shield her from the consequences. To where he had gone and with what means of livelihood he had provided her while she carried his child will remain a mystery. At the end of March, when the wind was still sharp with ice, Elisabeth was ordered to appear at the first of what would become regular examinations of her genitalia by a surgeon at the police inspection house.

  On her first visit, her name, Elisabeth Gustafsdotter of Torslanda, was inscribed on the official ledger as “Allmän Kvinna” (Public Woman) number 97.3 Elizabeth was required to provide certification of her birth and information about her past, such as where she had previously worked and where she lived. She was deliberately silent on these matters, stating only that she had been born the daughter of farmers and that she had come from the country to town, where she had worked as a servant. When asked about her religious education, she stated (incorrectly) that she had been confirmed at age seventeen.* The official recording her details then looked up at the young woman and assessed her appearance. He noted that she had “blue eyes” and “brown hair.” Her nose he described as “straight” and her face as “oval”—elongated rather than round. With the exception of her swelling, maternal belly, he surmised that the twenty-one-year-old woman had not been living a life of gluttony. She was five foot two inches tall, with a “slender” build.4

  The police would have explained to her the rules that would now govern her daily life. She had to attend the inspection house twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, or face arrest and a fine or three nights in prison on rations of bread and water. She was not permitted outdoors after 11 p.m. She was to “conduct a quiet and silent life”; she was prohibited from loitering in the windows or doorway of her home and “calling out to passers by”; she was required to “dress in a decent way when appearing in public” and “not to call attention to herself.” All these stipulations implied that Elisabeth, or any registered woman, was, without a doubt, a prostitute who solicited openly. The humiliation that women must have experienced at being lectured in such a way, especially if they did not associate themselves with the sex trade, or if their crimes were not public ones, but a rape or a private indiscretion with a lover, must have been overwhelming. Regardless of the fact that her name appeared on what was colloquially referred to as “the register of shame,” Elisabeth continued to describe herself, in her documentation that spring, not as a prostitute but as a servant.

  The routine of inspection was designed as much to chasten the city’s “public women” as it was to screen them. To avoid offending the sensibilities of Gothenburg’s respectable cit
izens passing along Östra Hamngatan, all suspected and known “public women” entered the police building through a concealed passage at the back. Once inside, they were required to strip naked and line up. Sometimes, if the wait was a long one, they were ordered to stand in the outdoor courtyard, shivering in the cold, as the uniformed officers stood watch over them.

  For a young woman who had been raised in a religious community and drilled in her catechism, the indignity of this experience would have been shocking. However, as Elisabeth was pregnant with an illegitimate child, it is likely that she, like so many women of her era, would have internalized the punishment as a justifiable one. Society and the church would have her believe she had sinned against her parents, her community, herself, and God. Her sense of disgrace is reflected in her reticence to reveal, in her registration document, further details of her circumstances. When asked about her parents, she did not hesitate to pronounce them both dead. While this was true of her mother, who had died of tuberculosis in August 1864, Elisabeth’s father was still very much alive, but the shame of her predicament would have kept her from returning to him.5 Anna Christina too, who had married in May of that year, seems to have severed all ties with her sister, whom she may very well have regarded as lost to the family.

  Since having her name placed on the police register in March 1865, Elisabeth would have been subjected to this routine no more than a handful of times before it was discovered, on April 4, that she had developed condyloma, or genital warts. The medical examiner recognized the meaning of this immediately: Allmän Kvinna 97 was presenting the symptoms of syphilis. She was committed immediately, under police escort, to the Kurhuset, or “cure house”—the venereal disease hospital.

  By the time Elisabeth was placed on the police roll, her syphilis had already entered its secondary phase. The first presentation of the disease would have occurred roughly ten to ninety days after exposure and included the appearance of a telltale chancre, or painless sore on the genitals, which would subside within three to six weeks. After this, Elisabeth would have begun to experience flu-like symptoms; a fever, swollen glands, a sore throat, and then the eruption of a rash on her back, hands, and soles of her feet. In this stage, victims also suffer from wart-like growths and lesions on the genitals. This secondary phase may last for no more than several months or may continue to plague the sufferer for well over a year.

  Although it is impossible to determine from whom Elisabeth contracted syphilis, the stage of the illness indicates that the father of her child may have transmitted it to her. The sexually inexperienced, who would not have known to look for symptoms of the disease on their partners, were more likely than those established in the sex trade to become infected.

  According to Elisabeth’s records, she was kept in the Kurhuset until May 13.6 Far from being a sanctuary to which sufferers could retreat for a cure, Gothenburg’s venereal disease hospital had a reputation for treating patients as prisoners. Because patients were committed there by order of the law, the attendants and nurses were allowed to use force and coercion to keep them locked in until they were pronounced cured. The comfort of those recovering was not a vital concern. In 1855, the Kurhuset housed 133 women in its syphilis ward, many of whom shared beds due to overcrowding. During those times when the numbers of patients exceeded capacity, the inmates were simply made to sleep on the floor.

  By the 1860s, two types of treatment for syphilis were advocated by the medical establishment. The first, and more traditional, involved the ingestion of mercury as well as the topical application of this liquid metal to chancres and lesions. The second, more modern theory favored other metals and chemicals—gold, silver, copper, bromine, iodine, and nitric acid—to be taken internally or applied in ointments. Both approaches were hazardous to patients’ health. Of these two methods, Gothenburg’s Kurhuset appears to have favored non-mercurial cures. Elisabeth, during her stay, was treated internally with hydroiodic acid, the main components of which are iodine and hydrogen; her genital warts would have been dehydrated with a cream or cut off. After receiving this cure for seventeen days, Elisabeth went into premature labor. On April 21, while under lock and key at the Kurhuset, she gave birth to a stillborn seven-month-old girl.* She did not cite the father’s name on the birth certificate.

  The trauma of Elisabeth’s experience between the end of March, when her name was placed on “the register of shame,” and May 13, when she was discharged from the Kurhuset, cannot be overestimated. To have been publicly denounced as a whore, to have suffered the indignity of police examinations, to have discovered that she carried a potentially deadly and disfiguring disease, to have been incarcerated like a prisoner and subjected to excruciating medical procedures, to have suffered a miscarriage in a hostile environment and then to have been released onto the street with no relations to whom she could turn must surely have scarred her.

  One of the consequences of a system that treated women suspected of “lecherous living” no differently than it treated known prostitutes was to condemn them both to the same fate. Once a woman appeared on the police register, she could not procure respectable work. To earn a living, her only recourse was to enter the profession she had been wrongly accused of practicing. It is not known precisely how Elisabeth came to join the ranks of the women who sold sex on Pilgatan, Goth­enburg’s infamous “street of many nymphs,” but by October 1865, she was citing it as her address.7 As streetwalking and open solicitation were prohibited by the police, Elisabeth had to ply her trade indoors, either at one of the area’s several “coffeehouses,” which masqueraded as legitimate establishments, or from within a brothel, though a madam might hesitate to hire a woman who had undergone treatment for syphilis. Trawling the coffeehouses between Pilgatan and Husargatan and learning the unwritten rules governing relationships among the various women, their clients, and the owners of coffeehouses and brothels would have presented Elisabeth with a steep learning curve. Violence, or at least the threat of it, would be a daily concern. At this time Elisabeth’s name does not appear on the census roll for Haga, the working-class district in which she claimed to live; she likely used an alias when she brought men back to her lodgings. The place she called home was probably one of a large number of small cubicle-like rooms known as luderkupor(whore closets) situated in the attic of many houses in the area. Specifically designed to be hired out to prostitutes, these spaces allowed the women to meet discreetly with clients and earn a meager living.

  The incurability of the disease from which Elisabeth suffered was but one of many misfortunes to befall her and, undoubtedly, a good number of the men with whom she had sex. As the pathology of syphilis was not fully understood, it was erroneously believed that the afflicted were not contagious while there were no immediate signs of the disease. In spite of the determined efforts of the medical profession to cure patients, a successful treatment for this terrible illness was not available until 1910 with the introduction of Salvarsan, and later with antibiotics. It is therefore not surprising that by August 30, Elisabeth was once more manifesting symptoms of the disease. She was returned to the Kurhuset, where she remained until September 23. On this occasion, a lesion on her pubis was treated with applications of silver nitrate. No sooner was she discharged than twenty-three days later she was admitted again on October 17, for another lesion, this time on her clitoris. Elisabeth underwent a repeat treatment with silver nitrate and again was declared “cured,” on November 1. Ensuing police examinations conducted on the third, the seventh, and the tenth attested that she was now “healthy,” though in truth she would never be.8 At some point after this date, Elisabeth’s syphilis entered its latent phase. Although her symptoms would disappear and she would no longer be contagious, eventually, many years later, the disease would return for its destructive, and terminal, tertiary stage.

  While the legal system took very little pity on those who found themselves caught in a vicious cycle of prostitution and disease, attitudes among some segments of the populatio
n were more sympathetic. Like many European nations, mid-nineteenth-century Sweden and its Nordic neighbors witnessed a groundswell of interest in the “rescue” of “fallen women.” This work, largely undertaken through the church by middle- and upper-class women, aimed to rehabilitate those who might otherwise be lost to God. At this time it was widely believed that personal choice, and not circumstance, motivated women to take up prostitution. Having strayed off the path, a fallen woman could also decide to return to it. Her character could be reformed; it was possible to turn “a public woman into a private woman” by bringing her back into the domestic sphere, the proper place for good Lutheran women. Rehabilitation involved retraining as a housemaid or a laundress and learning how to clean, iron, cook, tend children and the sick, sew, and create traditional handicrafts. The Lutheran Deaconesses, a group at the vanguard of this work, opened reformatory shelters and laundries and regularly made recruitment visits to red-light districts and venereal disease hospitals as part of their mission.

  It is likely that this is how Elisabeth was discovered by Maria Ingrid Wiesner. Maria, the wife of a German musician who had been employed by the Gothenburg Orchestra at the city’s recently built New Theatre, was not a wealthy woman. However, like the families of fellow musicians living in the clapboard block of apartments at 27 Husargatan, the Wiesners were accustomed to keeping a maidservant, a sign of social status. The decision to hire a fallen young woman who had been a patient at the Kurhuset may have come about as much as a result of the couple’s financial position as it did from a sense of Christian duty. Months earlier, the orchestra had been disbanded due to lack of funding, and rather than return with his Swedish wife to his native Bohemia, Carl Wenzel Wiesner chose to remain in Gothenburg and make a living as an oboist. At this time the Wiesners were without a maid, and as Maria was shortly expecting her first child, the assistance would be welcome, especially as women from the police register might be hired on a bed-and-board basis alone.

 

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