The Problems of Urban Life

An example of how the cities were changing, as a result of an influx of young male workers, was the increase in prostitution. In the later 1880s, historians estimate there were 80,000 prostitutes in London (of a population of 1.5 million) and 20,000 in Paris. We can know how many there were, because prostitutes were registered by the police.

Government and police officials were not at all concerned with the moral problems of prostitution; they tended to believe the clientele would be workers whose morality they found questionable to begin with. They did worry, however, that prostitution would spread venereal disease and the population would begin to "degenerate." This combination of disdain for the workers and worry about "degeneration" was a common response by the "bourgeois" (middle and upper class) part of the population to the growth of cities.