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Ladies of the Night: Prostitution in the Victorian World

Module description

Debates about ‘prostitution’ dominated Victorian discourse. Prostitution played a part in discussions of race, empire, military policy, policing and medical treatments. Debates about the scale of prostitution, the effect of prostitution on women, men and children, the impact of prostitution on the army and British imperial success, and the best way to tackle the ‘problem’ has left historians with a mass of evidence about the nature and extent of prostitution in the Victorian world for us to study in this course. We will explore a wide range of sources, such as newspaper reports, pornographic writing, social surveys, art works, novels, medical treatises, military investigations or religious pamphlets. Yet, this material poses a range of challenges to the historian. While the accuracy of these sources in assessing the nature of Victorian sex work remains moot, they remain rich in information about the nature of Victorian society and culture.

Module aims - intentions of the module

Various sources relating to Britain and its Empire will be used to illustrate both the extent and nature of prostitution and also its cultural significance. Debates about prostitution and the subjectivity of such sources will be shown to be revealing of wider Victorian political and social concerns particularly with regard to class, race, gender, civilisation, health and disease, and industrialisation and urbanisation.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Understand and assess the nature of Victorian views of prostitution
• 2. Work critically with a range of written and visual sources relating to the history of prostitution in the Victorian world

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Identify the problems of using historical sources e.g. utility, limitations, etc., and compare the validity of different types of source
• 4. Present historical arguments and answer questions orally

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Conduct independent study and group work, including the presentation of material for group discussion, developed through the mode of learning
• 6. Digest, select, and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument, developed through the mode of assessment
• 7. Write to a tight word-limit

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Newspaper reports
• Police reports
• Art works
• Feminist speeches
• Autobiographies
• Pornographic writings
• Medical reports
• Social Surveys
• Travel narratives
• Religious Sermons
• Material from charitable campaigns

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Walkowitz, Judith R. City of Dreadful Delight : Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London ( Virago, 1992).

Nead, Lynda. Victorian Babylon: People Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London (Yale Univ. Press 2011).

Levine, Philippa. Prostitution Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (Routledge, 2003).

Levine, Philippa. Gender and Empire (Oxford University Press, 2009).

Donovan Stephen and Matthew Rubery. Secret Commissions : An Anthology of Victorian Investigative Journalism. Broadview Press 2012.

Grube, Dennis. At the Margins of Victorian Britain: Politics, Immorality and Britishness in the Nineteenth Century (I.B.Tauris, 2013).

Attwood, Nina. The prostitute's body: rewriting prostitution in Victorian Britain (Pickering & Chatto, 2010).

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=11941