Prostitution dates unhappily from the earliest stages of human culture, and was a recognised institution in the times of the Jewish patriarchs (Gen. xxxviii. 15). The religious prostitution of women in honour of the goddess of fertility was usual in ancient Babylonia, and was an integral portion of the worship of Ashtoreth in Phœnicia; and similar licentious orgies disgraced the worship of the Egyptian Isis at Rome. Venal prostitution was legalised at Athens, and the Romans had regular brothels. Christian kings issued at various times strenuous laws aiming at the suppression of the vice; some of the earliest examples of this legislation being found amongst the capitularies of Charlemagne. The Crusades gave a great impetus to unceasing immorality; and in the middle ages it may be said that prostitution was recognised as a necessary and inevitable part of the social organism. In the Thirty Years' War swarms of women followed the armies of both sides. Modern states vary much in their attitude to this vice, either disregarding it, regulating it by specific ordinances, or trying to check it. In Japan (q.v., Vol. VI. p. 286) prostitution may even be regarded as an honourable self-devotion.
In the language of English law, a prostitute is a woman who carries on a course of habitual and promiscuous immorality. Acts of immorality are not always criminal; but in England a brothel or disorderly house is a nuisance, and a person who keeps such a house may be indicted and punished by fine and imprisonment; if two ratepayers make a complaint to the police the local authorities undertake the prosecution, and the expenses are paid out of the rates. The landlord of a house is also liable to penalties if it is used with his knowledge as a brothel. Special penalties are imposed on brothel-keepers harbouring thieves, and on publicans who permit prostitutes to assemble on their premises. The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, deals with the offence of procuring any woman or girl to have unlawful connection with any person, or to become an inmate of a brothel at home or abroad, and with the offence of using threats, or false representations, or drugs for the same unlawful purpose. A search-warrant may be granted under the act in case there is reason to suspect that a woman or girl is detained as an inmate of a brothel. No punishment is inflicted on the men who frequent a brothel; not because the guilt of sexual vice is less in a man than in a woman, but because immoral women form a definite class of the community and immoral men do not. In the law of contract prostitution is regarded as a worthless or as an illegal consideration, according to circumstances. Thus, a bond providing for future illicit cohabitation is void, as being founded on an illegal consideration; a promise to pay money for past cohabitation is founded on no consideration at all, and is binding if made under seal. A person who lets lodgings or supplies dresses, &c. to a woman for the purpose of enabling her to live as a prostitute cannot recover the rent of the premises or the price of the goods sold. In some continental countries the law extends a certain toleration to brothels, and deals with prostitutes for the purpose of preventing the spread of venereal disease. By the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1864-68, a system of inspection was established in certain military and naval stations in England and Ireland; magistrates were empowered to order the examination and detention in hospital of women suffering from contagious diseases. As to the medical and moral results of the acts, there is an extraordinary conflict of evidence. A resolution condemning the whole system of examination was adopted by the House of Commons in 1883, on the motion of Mr Stansfeld; the acts have been repealed; and in India the same system was in 1897 abolished by the governor-general in council.
See also the articles in this work on the CONTAGIOUS DISEASES ACTS, WOMEN'S RIGHTS (Vol. X. p. 716); Wardlaw, Lectures on Female Prostitution (1843); Acton, Prostitution Considered (1857; 2d ed. 1870); Sanger, History and Causes of Prostitution (New York, 1858); Henry Mayhew, the extra volume of London Labour and the London Poor (1861); Lecky, History of European Morals (1869); Dr Eliz. Blackwell, Moral Education (1878), and The Human Element in Sex (1883); Sheldon Amos, Laws for the Prohibition, Regulation, and Licensing of Vice (1877); Powell, State Regulation of Vice (New York, 1878); Lacroix, Histoire de la Prostitution (6 vols. 1851-54); works by Lecour (3d ed. 1877) and Yves Guyot (Eng. trans.); and German works by Hûgel (1865), Kühn (3d ed. 1888), Huppe (1870), Schrank (1886), and Stursfeld (1887).