History of Prostitution

This landmark Victorian study stands as a remarkable time capsule of nineteenth-century social thought. William Sangster approached prostitution not as a moral curiosity but as a public health crisis and urban phenomenon demanding rigorous examination. Written during an era when reformers were finally breaking the silence on so-called 'social evils,' the book traces the history and causes of prostitution while documenting its devastating effects on individual lives and civic welfare. Sangster argues that intelligent citizens cannot afford to ignore what happens in the shadows of their cities, particularly when disease, exploitation, and ruined constitutions spread outward from hidden quarters into the general population. The text reflects both the progressive impulses and the limitations of its era: a genuine desire to understand and mitigate suffering alongside the paternalistic assumptions of the time. Sangster's New York focus grounds abstract moral questions in concrete urban reality, examining how rapid industrialization, immigration, and poverty created conditions that sustained the oldest profession. The work endures not as a definitive account but as a window into how Victorians wrestled with uncomfortable truths about their society, and how the language of 'causes' and 'effects' shaped reform movements that would echo through subsequent generations.