There is, however, one class of British prostitutes which this correspondent finds to be an exception to the general rule:  the class of those who are recruited from the lower walks of the stage.  “Such women are generally more licentious—­that is to say, more acquainted with the bizarre in sexualism—­than girls who come from shops or bars; they show a knowledge of fellatio, and even anal coitus, and during menstruation frequently suggest inter-mammary coitus.”

On the whole it would appear that prostitutes, though not usually impelled to their life by motives of sensuality, on entering and during the early part of their career possess a fairly average amount of sexual impulse, with variations in both directions of excess and deficiency as well as of perversion.  At a somewhat later period it is useless to attempt to measure the sexual impulse of prostitutes by the amount of pleasure they take in the professional performance of sexual intercourse.  It is necessary to ascertain whether they possess sexual instincts which are gratified in other ways.  In a large proportion of cases this is found to be so.  Masturbation, especially, is extremely common among prostitutes everywhere; however prevalent it may be among women who have no other means of obtaining sexual gratification it is admitted by all to be still more prevalent among prostitutes, indeed almost universal.[185]

Homosexuality, though not so common as masturbation, is very frequently found among prostitutes—­in France, it would seem, more frequently than in England—­and it may indeed be said that it occurs more often among prostitutes than among any other class of women.  It is favored by the acquired distaste for normal coitus due to professional intercourse with men, which leads homosexual relationships to be regarded as pure and ideal by comparison.  It would appear also that in a considerable proportion of cases prostitutes present a congenital condition of sexual inversion, such a condition, with an accompanying indifference to intercourse with men, being a predisposing cause of the adoption of a prostitute’s career.  Kurella even regards prostitutes as constituting a sub-variety of congenital inverts.  Anna Rueling in Germany states that about twenty per cent. prostitutes are homosexual; when asked what induced them to become prostitutes, more than one inverted woman of the street has replied to her that it was purely a matter of business, sexual feeling not coming into the question except with a friend of the same sex.[186]

The occurrence of congenital inversion among prostitutes—­although we need not regard prostitutes as necessarily degenerate as a class—­suggests the question whether we are likely to find an unusually large number of physical and other anomalies among them.  It cannot be said that there is unanimity of opinion on this point.  For some authorities prostitutes are merely normal ordinary women of low social rank, if indeed their instincts are not even a little superior to those of the class in which they were born.  Other investigators find among them so large a proportion of individuals deviating from the normal that they are inclined to place prostitutes generally among one or other of the abnormal classes.[187]