Governing prostitution

‘The world’s oldest profession’ is undoubtedly the most well-known cliché associated with prostitution. While this statement reflects the phenomenon’s timeless nature, it has a history of its own. Rudyard Kipling coined the phrase in 1888, drawing on metaphors dating back to previous centuries. Thanks to his rapidly rising fame, he popularised it around the world (Mattson Reference Mattson2015). Although research published over the last 30 years has examined the history of paid sex from various angles, it has emphasised that the sale of sexual services is not an essential feature of all societies or all eras (Gilfoyle Reference Gilfoyle1999). This highlights the importance of contextualising prostitution historically. In fact, scholars agree that the history of prostitution should be placed within a broader narrative framework, as it sheds new and interesting light on the social relations and ways of life of a given society, as well as on issues such as sexuality, gender inequality, racism, morality and the mechanisms of control and repression (Herzog Reference Herzog2011; Barbagli Reference Barbagli2020; Dolinsek and Hearne Reference Dolinsek and Hearne2023).

Building on existing scholarship, this article adopts the definition of prostitution provided by Rodríguez García, Heerma van Voss and van Nederveen Meerkerk: ‘[S]ex for payment … with no prospects for marriage’ (2000, 8). The explicit exclusion of the prospect of marriage serves to distinguish prostitution from long-term, socially accepted relationships involving sexual exchanges and financial agreements, while the term ‘payment’ is deliberately vague so as to include non-monetary remuneration.Footnote ¹ Furthermore, we must consider the fact that the term ‘prostitution’ has long been stigmatised. On closer inspection, the real target of the stigma is not the concept of prostitution, but the prostitute: ‘[A]nything that marks a woman as a prostitute forms a basis for stigma’ (Edlund and Korn Reference Edlund and Korn2002, 208). Although the perception of paid sex has varied over times and across different cultures, oscillating between total condemnation and acceptance, women who sell sex – doing a job that has been associated with their identity since ancient times – are always judged negatively. Hence, the term ‘prostitute’ is also a powerful metaphor, and paid sex provides public authorities and private actors with a means of setting their social, real and symbolic boundaries.

Gertrude Himmelfarb has argued that the history of prostitution focuses primarily on social issues and therefore obscures the political sphere (Reference Himmelfarb1987, 4). As the title suggests, this article aims to demonstrate that the subject is far from being exempt from politics, especially during the Fascist ventennio, when sexual behaviour was more closely linked to the administration of power than at any other time. The analysis of prostitution during Fascism – unlike more widely studied topics – highlights the regime’s ambition to dominate the intimate sphere. As with other areas of people’s lives, this too had political value.Footnote ²

However, it was during the ventennio that the issue of prostitution was characterised by the starkest contradictions and ambivalence. Indeed, to control every aspect of people’s lives, the regime paid close attention to sexual issues, imposing strict rules and reshaping morality. The existence of authorised brothels was therefore at odds with this attempt to moralise people’s conduct. The ‘house of tolerance’, as brothels were also known at the time, formed the centrepiece of the regulatory regime established in Italy in 1860. It was the tool used by Italian governments to manage prostitution until its abolition in 1958.Footnote ³ Regulationism – the idea that the state recognised and authorised paid sex only within dedicated facilities – was based on three fundamental objectives, to be achieved through the segregation of prostitutes in brothels: defending public order, upholding morality and preserving health. The moment they agreed to enter a brothel, prostitutes became ‘public women’ whose bodies were placed at the service of the nation. This subjected them to continuous surveillance in the form of compulsory registration on police records and forced medical checks involving invasive examinations and treatments to ensure that they were free from venereal diseases. Fascism inherited the liberal brothel system and tightened its already strict rules. It increased control over brothels and over prostitutes, especially ‘illegal’ ones (i.e. those operating outside legal premises), who were required to obtain a health card. It also gave more power to the public security forces, who frequently abused this power, though not without opposition, as Fascist legislation also expanded the authority of the doctors responsible for health monitoring. Their work, too, was tainted by illegality.Footnote ⁴

But why did Mussolini adopt a method of managing paid sex that entailed such significant compromise by the state on an issue universally considered reprehensible and highly immoral, despite his policy of ‘moral renewal’? To answer this question, we must look at some of the stereotypes surrounding prostitution that exist in different geographical locations and historical periods, which found particularly fertile ground in Fascism because they aligned perfectly with its rigidly patriarchal and anti-feminist vision.Footnote ⁵

First of all, during the ventennio, there was almost unanimous agreement on the idea of the ‘lesser evil’ – that is, prostitution was considered evil but necessary for maintaining social order. This perspective was shaped by the belief that paid sex posed moral, social, health and political risks, representing disorder, excess and ungovernability. These fears led Alexandre Parent-Duchatelet, a French hygienist and the father of regulationism, to devise a system in the early nineteenth century that confined prostitution to legal brothels within a prison system.Footnote ⁶ This system was exported to Italy half a century later. The risk factor most often used by Fascist authorities to justify the presence of regulated brothels was the threat to public health posed by the spread of venereal diseases, which were dreaded and for which prostitutes were considered primarily responsible. Syphilis was of particular concern. After temporarily dying out in the early sixteenth century, it began to spread again across Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century, continuing to do so until 1945, when the introduction of penicillin permanently halted its progress. However, until the mid-twentieth century, venereal diseases continued to be treated with useless methods and drugs that did not stop their spread or alleviate the strong concern associated with them (Barbagli Reference Barbagli2020, 386–390).

Given this premise, one wonders why the regime did not simply ban prostitution, rather than trying to control it. This would have been more consistent with its policy of changing Italian morality. The reason for this decision lies in the famous cliché that men had uncontrollable sexual urges that needed to be ‘vented’ with prostitutes. If they were not, men would seek to satisfy their needs by harassing ‘respectable’ women, who had to be protected and clearly separated – physically and symbolically – from the ‘bad women’ (Barbagli Reference Barbagli2020, 175–180).

This inflexible division had existed in previous eras, but the regulatory regime made it even more rigid. Fascism intensified its segregationist effects, using it to further exclude prostitutes from public spaces and to promote the concept of hygienic sexuality, which, as we will see, had racist connotations. At the same time, the division between ‘respectable’ women and prostitutes served to reduce the – real and ideal – space that the regime intended to grant the former, whose sexuality had to be constrained and directed towards reproduction, in accordance with pro-natalist and eugenicist logic (De Grazia Reference De Grazia2023, 88–139). Hence, since men were necessarily driven to satisfy their unavoidable physiological needs, brothels were considered the lesser evil; without them, male lust could potentially be unleashed on all women, endangering the health and morals of respectable Italian women. Additionally, if we consider the fear of venereal diseases and the many dangers associated with prostitutes, which are discussed further below, it becomes clear why Fascism was a staunch supporter of brothels, which were never questioned during the Fascist ventennio.

In sum, the regulatory regime was also an effective means of institutionalising the ‘sexual double standard’. On the one hand, Fascism classified prostitutes as the sole source of venereal diseases in order to justify their segregation and their subjection to invasive and compulsory medical examinations. On the other hand, men could even be – and, in a certain sense, were – encouraged to pay for sexual relations before and outside marriage. Moreover, the double standard was a means of discriminating not just against prostitutes, but against all women, given that only men were allowed to commit adultery. Finally, state-regulated prostitution reflected the separation between the public and private spheres. Although women who sold sex were considered ‘public’ women (i.e. available to any man), they were excluded from public spaces and segregated in brothels, which were further characterised by gender discrimination, with customers being exclusively male.

The separation between wives (and mothers) and prostitutes, with the latter serving to uphold the virtue of the former, became problematic in cases where the prostitute was married, as her activities would then also constitute adultery. In a letter to all prefects, the ministry of the interior addressed the issue in the following terms:

According to the ministry of the interior, the state was not obliged to obstruct a married woman’s request to engage in prostitution, primarily because this would not have prevented the betrayed spouse from exercising his right to prosecute his adulterous wife. The author of the missive also made an observation that clearly reflects the moral distinction that the regime made between the honest woman and the ‘public’ woman: once the former had chosen the path of prostitution, she lost ‘the prerogatives of a wife and mother’, meaning that a woman could not be both a prostitute and a spouse and parent. The prostitute was indeed functional in preserving marriage, but only that of others. This allowed men – including married men – to satisfy their sexual desires while avoiding the risk that they might molest women who were already or not yet married. However, the sexual double standard did not permit female adultery, let alone the possibility that respectable women might prostitute themselves. Within this view of the relationship between the sexes, a certain pragmatism and laissez-faire attitude can be detected in the stance of the ministry of the interior. After all, the highest authority on prostitution could have imposed a rule prohibiting married women from taking up the trade. Instead, it was deemed preferable to settle the matter within the confines of the home.

First, however, an attempt was made to bring the sinner back under the marital roof. This task was delegated to the police, whose role during Fascism was not only to contribute to ‘the protection of order’, but also – albeit less commonly – to safeguard the family unit. This is not surprising, given that Mussolini aimed to control every aspect of Italians’ daily lives, and those responsible for maintaining public order (hence public safety) were clearly considered the most appropriate reference point for maintaining ‘private order’ as well. However, we can again see a contradiction in a state that leaves it up to citizens to solve the problem of wives potentially being involved in prostitution, yet includes the protection of the family unit among the specific tasks of the police.Footnote ⁸

The authorities and civil society rarely criticised the many inconsistencies of a state whose propaganda focused on restoring more solid ethical values, but which simultaneously managed the country’s prostitution network. However, there were some interesting exceptions. One notable case is that of Bassano B. from Lodi, who wrote the following in a letter to Mussolini:

The letter is interesting for several reasons. First, it is one of the few cases in which the head of government was criticised for his approach to brothels. The archive used for this research contains communications addressed to the Duce, the ministry of the interior, the chief of police and, to a lesser extent, the royal family. While most of these documents are from local authorities, many also came from ordinary citizens. The letters between the heads of institutions obviously did not express any opinions on the matter, but those written by citizens clearly show that the regulatory regime was taken for granted, lasting and unquestionable. Whether the writers were parents, young girls, businessmen or humble workers, everyone had the same goal: to prevent the opening of brothels near their homes, their places of work or their social circles. However, no one proposed banning them; people simply asked that they be located elsewhere.

The issue of brothels was also a point of dispute between Mussolini and the Catholic church.Footnote ¹⁰ In fact, the clergy took the same stance as ordinary citizens, with parish priests and high-ranking prelates regularly trying to block the opening of a brothel in a city or neighbourhood, using Father Tacchi Venturi as an intermediary. They would make generic objections but without ever addressing the real crux of the problem: namely, the very existence of brothels, which placed the church in a position of inconsistency between its morality – dictated by Catholic doctrine – and its acceptance of legalised prostitution.

Since power was in the hands of an illiberal regime, people knew that writing to the authorities to request their intervention meant they had to structure their plea in such a way as to be deemed worthy of support. Hence, the strategy to be adopted was to flatter and certainly not to contradict.Footnote ¹¹ However, the fact that there is an almost total absence of even veiled criticism or perplexity, including in anonymous letters, is indicative not so much – or not only – of the persuasiveness of the regime’s propaganda, but also of the idea that brothels were a necessary and timeless system. This view, which was supported by the aforementioned stereotypes, existed before Fascism and did not disappear with its end.

The second reason why the above letter is interesting is the clarity with which the author highlights the stark contrast between the existence of brothels and the regime’s pro-natalist policies. Not only were brothels ‘hotbeds of scandal and immorality’, but they were also a case of ‘flagrant inconsistency’ with the laws enacted during the ventennio to increase births, such as the bachelor tax or bonuses for large families. In other words, authorising brothels essentially promoted non-procreative sex. Paid sex was not only a conspicuous exception, but also an exception wanted and governed by the Fascist state within its rigid programme of population growth. Intimate relations in brothels were the exact opposite of reproductive ones, which had to take place within marriage.

Although communications between the authorities often referred to brothels as the only bulwark of public health and morality, no mention was made of the issue raised by Bassano B. Likewise, other letters written by citizens alluded to it, but the institutions never addressed the issue. Nonetheless, the Fascist power was probably aware of this further antinomy inherent in the regulatory regime. The fact that the promiscuity typical of brothels was considered a threat to the patriarchal family, which was based on men’s ability to guarantee paternity and women’s commitment to fidelity, can perhaps be inferred from the tolerance towards the use of condoms, which were only permitted in brothels, also to prevent the spread of venereal diseases. Contraceptive methods are another element of contradiction with the demographic policy of the ventennio, since condoms were never banned by law. Curiously, while Fascism did not prohibit their sale, it did punish their advertising. Article 553 of the penal code prohibited ‘incitement to practices against procreation’, making both public incitement to contraceptive practices and information aimed at spreading a positive image of them punishable offences (Di Iorio Reference Di Iorio2023).

Brothels and the ‘defence of the race’

The regime certainly did not ignore the fact that legal brothels undermined its credibility as a government aiming to establish a new order devoted to moral renewal and demographic control. Likewise, it was aware of the problems caused by its regulatory regime in terms of foreign policy, particularly with regard to its relationship with the League of Nations. During the 1920s and 1930s, the League endeavoured to manage the worldwide growth of prostitution through a special committee: the Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children. The latter was close to the abolitionist groups that fought to eliminate the regulatory regime and decriminalise prostitution. Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these groups had also taken root in Italy, supported by Sinistra (the political left), the nascent feminist movement and the working class (Ercolani Reference Ercolani2022, 87–160). However, the abolitionist movement was short-lived and died out during the Fascist era. For the Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, Mussolini’s Italy was one of the countries that had adopted a regulatory regime, and because the government had failed to implement measures designed to crack down more stringently on the international trafficking of women, its assessment was far from positive. Furthermore, despite its active participation in the committee’s activities, Italy had not complied with the explicit request to abolish brothels. Instead, it had increased surveillance of prostitutes and extended the powers of the public security forces – not to protect the rights of prostitutes, but to strengthen the authority of the state (Schettini Reference Schettini2019, 169–174; Gibson Reference Gibson and Bartoloni2021).

It is likely that foreign policy issues, combined with the inconsistency of the coexistence of legal brothels with propaganda focused on a moral and social ‘revolution’, led the regime to adopt an official position on prostitution that can be summarised as ‘tolerate but do not authorise’. The ministry of the interior explained it to the Rome police commissioner in the following terms:

The regime essentially claimed to have chosen a ‘third way’ between abolitionism and regulationism in order to control prostitution, with brothels being ‘tolerated’ only for reasons of public safety and health, but not authorised. In reality, the Fascist brothel system was fully in line with the regulatory regime introduced by Cavour. Building on a well-established tool, Mussolini’s legislation took an even more authoritarian turn, based on the supposed prevention of venereal diseases and social chaos, as well as on the need to provide a supervised outlet for male desire, presumed to be unavoidable. Although the ‘third way’ had no regulatory or institutional implications, as the traditional functioning of brothels remained unaffected, it allowed the regime to stall the demands of the League of Nations and attempt to improve the country’s international reputation, presenting it as respectable and anything but indulgent towards ‘vice’. Domestically, the ‘tolerate but do not authorise’ principle served to reinforce the notion that Fascism had changed the management of prostitution – pure propaganda, in reality.

The letter from the ministry of the interior cited above contains another important element for understanding the role of brothels during the ventennio: the reference to the ‘preservation of the race’. The regime introduced this function in brothels in 1931, when the new penal code drafted by the minister of justice, Alfredo Rocco, came into force.Footnote ¹² Title X of the Rocco Code, entitled ‘Crimes against the integrity and health of the race’, contained articles concerning various crimes against procreation, such as abortion. Article 554 even introduced the crime of ‘contagion of syphilis and gonorrhoea’; the transmission of venereal diseases was no longer considered simply a crime against the person, but one against the race. It was sexual intercourse and a new generation of Italians that preserved and expanded the nation the Duce wanted – based on blood, descent and genealogy. For this reason, surveillance of sexual relations had to be maximised to ensure the purity of the bloodline (Banti Reference Banti2011, 171).

From 1931 onwards, the deliberate transmission of sexually transmitted diseases was therefore deemed a crime against the health of the race, and prostitutes, especially illegal ones, were seen as the main culprits. Until then, legal brothels had been considered the only means of preventing infection and thus protecting individual citizens’ health, but with the new penal code, they also became a real tool for the ‘defence of the race’. The logic was always the same: men could have sexual relations without running the risk of contracting diseases that could impair the health of the offspring of the ‘Italian race’ only if prostitutes were monitored – including from a health perspective – within public brothels, whereas the ‘vagrant Venuses’ (i.e. illegal prostitutes) were considered to be the main spreaders of infection. Concerned that the increase in venereal diseases was contributing to ‘infertility, frequent abortions and infant mortality’, the authorities attributed responsibility to ‘the insufficient number of authorised brothels’ and called for the opening of new ones.Footnote ¹³

In addition to attempting to increase the number of legal brothels, the regime also tried to tackle illegal prostitution by carrying out raids. As already mentioned, Fascist legislation required illegal prostitutes to obtain a health card in which periodic health visits had to be recorded, thus extending to them the preventive measures to which registered prostitutes were subjected. Next, they were forbidden to follow potential clients and solicit on the street. But the most interesting innovation introduced by the regime was the prohibition of ‘loitering in public places with the intention of soliciting’. This meant that any woman could be considered a prostitute at the police’s discretion, as they could interpret her behaviour as a soliciting ‘attitude’, while those responsible for sanctioning the act could expand their decision-making power based on generic suspicions, thereby restricting any woman’s freedom (Serpico Reference Serpico2020, 15; Schettini Reference Schettini2019, 168). Violation of the ban was punishable by a few days in prison, but some resorted to more energetic methods of clearing the streets of the much feared ‘vagrant Venuses’. The police commissioner of Naples, for example, operated as follows:

Hence, whenever the Neapolitan authorities rounded up prostitutes who could not be expelled from the city because they were locals, they punished them with an admonition. This allowed the authorities to monitor them more closely and detain them in the event of an offence. Illegal prostitutes were also among the large group of ‘dangerous’ people whom the regime tried to marginalise from society for committing immoral acts, condemning them to various penalties, such as injunctions, admonitions, house arrest and detainment.

As a result, the contempt and mistrust that had long been reserved for illegal prostitutes intensified. During the war, it even became a source of harassment, as illustrated by this letter from a citizen to Mussolini:

The author then gave some suggestions that, in his opinion, would improve the fight against clandestine prostitution, and added:

According to the unknown interlocutor, unregulated prostitution posed the main threat to the ‘protection’ and ‘custody’ of the race, which had to be counterbalanced by the family. This view was emblematic of the way in which the regime’s propaganda had conveyed these issues. While the age-old stereotype of the brothel as a lesser evil may have become part of Italians’ cultural baggage before the ventennio, the idea of brothels as a bulwark for the ‘defence of the race’ was spread by Fascism, and the author’s letter is an example of eloquent – albeit rare – proselytism. In fact, the phrase was primarily used by the authorities, and frequent traces of it can be found in documents from the 1930s. However, ordinary citizens used it only rarely in their letters, which might suggest that the regime’s ideology had limited influence on the less politicised population.

It is worth remembering that the fight against illegal prostitution in the name of the ‘defence of the race’ occurred at a time when the connection between racial preservation and preventive health measures, based on eugenics and aimed at averting the risk of the ‘gens italica’ declining, was gaining ground in Italian culture (see Mignemi Reference Mignemi and Jesi1994; Cassata Reference Cassata2006; De Cristofaro Reference De Cristofaro2015). This same criterion was applied to the use of brothels to defend the race, which in this case referred to controlling intimate relations between Italians and the colonised population.Footnote ¹⁶ When Mussolini proclaimed the empire, he was haunted by the fear of ‘miscegenation’: the idea that offspring from the union of a ‘white’ Italian man and a ‘black’ colonial subject could undermine the principles of racial hierarchy based on blood and descent (see Barrera Reference Barrera and Bottoni2008; Stoler Reference Stoler2010). To avert this risk, he introduced the first wholly discriminatory legislative measure, the madamato, which aimed at prohibiting marital relations (‘rapporti di indole coniugale’) (see Gabrielli Reference Gabrielli1996, Reference Gabrielli1997). The term stems from Italian colonial slang, where madama referred to an African woman living with or having a stable relationship with an Italian man (Barrera Reference Barrera, De Grazia and Luzzatto2003, 69).

How could the sexual needs of Italian men be met in the colonies? This was a delicate issue, given that the female population was predominantly African. The regime’s intention was to proceed with a gradual ‘demographic colonisation’ by sending Italian women to the colonies. However, before being able to receive them, it was necessary to set up a whole series of services that took time to implement. For this reason, respectable Italian women were to be temporarily replaced by prostitutes, who could be Italian or European – as long as they were ‘white’. With this in mind, the ministry of the colonies sent several communications to the ministry of the interior, reporting the urgent need to send prostitutes from Italy in order to ensure that Italian men in African territories could ‘satisfy their physiological needs without physical and moral harm and without irreparable damage to the homogeneity of the race’.Footnote ¹⁷

The Fascist regime thus encouraged the transfer of prostitutes to the Italian colonies in Africa to prevent the colonisers from turning to African women. However, this decision also posed a problem: the provision of sexual services by young Italian women in the colonised lands was considered a disgrace to the prestige of the Italian race and its supposed moral superiority. Women, including prostitutes, symbolically embodied the nation, and their bodies were considered public property – the repository of both family and national honour. Mussolini’s solution was to ensure ethnic concordance between prostitute and client by employing Italian women in brothels that were forbidden to African men. In reality, the regime was more concerned with safeguarding Italian racial identity – threatened by interracial relations and the consequent risk of racial mixing – than with upholding the nation’s prestige (Cegna Reference Cegna, Caligiuri, Carletti and Ciotti2024).

Normalising the prostitute

The subject of prostitution is difficult to document in history. This is mainly because, like any other member of a subordinate group, prostitutes do not record their lives. As Timothy J. Gilfoyle points out, they:

However, these women have left some traces. Although the documents on which this research is based mostly reflect the position assigned to prostitutes by the authorities, even the papers produced by the elites ‘were shaped to some degree by the interventions of subalterns themselves’ (Hershatter Reference Hershatter1997, 26). Moreover, while it is difficult – if not impossible – to draw up a clear profile of the category of women who sold sex during the ventennio, we can gain an understanding of how the regime viewed them and tried to repress what it considered to be their inherently subversive nature.

As we have seen, prostitutes were considered a threat not only to public health and morality, but also to political life and society. They were associated with sexual disorder, excess and, worst of all, pleasure. Following Cesare Lombroso’s theories, as set out in La donna delinquente, la prostituta e la donna normale (Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman, 1893), which he co-authored with Guglielmo Ferrero, it was believed that a woman was ‘normal’ if she fulfilled herself through motherhood. Accordingly, her sexual activity was characterised by moderation and, above all, procreative purposes (Gibson Reference Gibson2008; Montaldo Reference Montaldo2019); anyone who deviated from this model of femininity was considered a ‘deviant’ subject. Erotic desire represented a regression to a primitive stage, and the lowest point on the scale of deviance was reserved for prostitutes. Although women ‘of pleasure’ had been classified as deviant well before Fascism, during the ventennio their sexual freedom and resistance to reproductive sex became even more unacceptable. It is not surprising, then, that Lombroso’s theories on female criminality and prostitution – despite being widely contested at the time – exerted a significant influence during the Fascist era;Footnote ¹⁸ they continued to inform studies until the 1970s. The promiscuity of prostitutes was (and is) a threat to any patriarchal society, even more so to a regime that had established not only the racial preservation of the species, but also its maximum growth, which had to be achieved through the defence of motherhood and the female body – understood exclusively as reproductive. The bodies of regulated prostitutes, expropriated by the state to satisfy male desire, allowed mothers to safely reproduce. In both cases, Fascism subjected women’s bodies to the will of the regime.

In this effort to maximise the resources that women could contribute to the Fascist cause, illegal prostitutes were the only ones to escape discipline. As we have seen, they were subject to constant surveillance and repression, and doctors and police officers were authorised to act with absolute discretion. However, legal and illegal prostitutes had one thing in common: the contempt or, at best, pity with which public and private actors treated them. In the nineteenth century, women ‘of pleasure’ were increasingly victimised on the presumption that they had not necessarily engaged in sinful behaviour, but had instead fallen prey to people with bad intentions (Rodríguez García, Heerma van Voss and van Nederveen Meerkerk Reference Rodríguez García, van Voss and van Nederveen Meerkerk2017, 12–14). In the latter case, it was crucial for institutions to try to save them. This perspective was deeply rooted during the ventennio, and it formed an integral part of the authorities’ interventions and, accordingly, of the regime’s governance of prostitution, which aimed to guide ‘lost’ women back onto the right path. But who could do this? For the Fascist state, this was down to the police, who also had to monitor families. In other words, Fascism wanted a ‘moral’ police force, amplifying the concept of public order to encompass more and more areas of private life.

In a letter to all prefects, the ministry of the interior described how public security should deal with ‘unhappy’ young people:

In other words, the police had to deploy their best officers to help prostitutes who wanted to ‘return to an honest life’. In reality, the only concrete tool available to the authorities was to find accommodation for those who wanted to leave the sex trade. In doing so, they relied on – mostly religious – philanthropic or charitable institutions.Footnote ²⁰ In the absence of public bodies, the fate of these prostitutes thus rested with private organisations, rather than with public institutions or the state, which did nothing to help repentant prostitutes apart from sending letters like the one cited above.

Archival sources say very little about the police’s efforts to carry out this task. When the ministry of the interior assigned the operation, they were urged to proceed with the utmost care. However, some documents reveal that, in specific cases, the police made considerable efforts to persuade prostitutes to change their lives. For example, when Maria A. (born in Desenzano in 1913) was discharged from Cremona hospital after being admitted for gonorrhoea, the local police authorities immediately tried to convince her to ‘abandon the life she had embarked on’. The girl initially seemed convinced of her choice, but ‘after the paternal exhortation of the official, who also reminded her of her deceased mother, she let herself be persuaded to accept the hospitality of the Rifugio del Cuore di Gesù’, an institution that took in ‘young women of legal age who had gone astray’.Footnote ²¹

The authorities had been alerted to Maria’s case after receiving an anonymous letter addressed to the local prefecture and signed by ‘a fascist’. The latter urged them to ensure that ‘prostitutes in current brothels were less exploited’ and to implement ‘a work of redemption’, pointing to Maria as a young woman who, with assistance, might change her life.Footnote ²² In this case, the author of the anonymous letter believed that prostitutes were victims to be saved, but not everyone agreed. Although most Italians continued to view the regulatory regime as a necessary evil, the assessment of women ‘of pleasure’ was quite different. They suffered general contempt and disapproval, according to the logic that ‘the prostitute serves men in a way that would be scandalous if done by a wife’ (Edlund and Korn Reference Edlund and Korn2002, 208).

The negative perception of prostitutes is aptly demonstrated by a citizen who described them as ‘snakes that poison mankind, exploiting their more or less lasting beauty or attractiveness without any love, with a treacherous heart’, comparing them to ‘vampires’ who ‘greedily suck money, ruining families and sending them into poverty, with innocent children, depriving them of the purest and most sacred love, bringing them poison, hell and crime’.Footnote ²³ Another interesting example is that of the residents of a street in Forlì, where several brothels had existed for a long time. They wrote to the ministry of the interior to request their relocation or closure:

Prostitutes bore an additional stigma that could not be levelled at brothels. While the latter had to be tolerated for reasons of public order, morality and race, those who sold their bodies were seen ‘as sewers, drains and rubbish dumps’ (Parent-Duchatelet Reference Parent-Duchatelet1836, 513).

Moreover, in the rare letters sent by prostitutes to the authorities, mainly to report harassment and abuse at the hands of the brothel-keepers, they described themselves as ‘poor wretches’ and ‘miserable’. While this may have been a deliberate choice aimed at gaining the recipients’ goodwill, it is also possible that this was their actual self-perception – the result of internalising the social stigma that had accompanied their profession for a very long time, which deemed them worthy of dialogue only as victims.

In her study of prostitution in late Victorian London, Judith R. Walkowitz (Reference Walkowitz1992) observed that prostitutes were perceived as both a dangerous and in danger. Archival sources suggest that, in Fascist Italy, women ‘of pleasure’ were exclusively seen as a source of danger. In fact, most of the time, the authorities’ actions were either repressive or omissive, except for ministerial directives urging the police to try to save ‘young women gone astray’, but these were only occasionally implemented in the form of a police officer’s paternalistic lecture. If his words were successful, he would hand the ‘unfortunate’ woman over to a private charitable institution. As we have seen, the women targeted most by the repression were the ‘vagrant Venuses’, who worked outside of brothels and were considered the least reliable. Legal prostitutes, on the other hand, worked inside brothels – that is, a place considered safe – so they were essentially ignored and left at the brothel-keepers’ mercy. In fact, police surveillance of brothels concerned only their operation, for which the brothel-keeper was held responsible. Hence, the police dealt only with the managers of brothels and not with the prostitutes, who were subject to strict control, which often resulted in abuse and violence, including by the managers themselves. In other words, the brothel-keeper was informally granted almost complete power over the women working in a public brothel. The regulatory regime furthermore created a system of debts that limited the women’s ability to leave the brothel and deprived them of most of their bargaining power. During the ventennio, this situation was exacerbated by widespread dishonesty among the public security forces, which allowed brothel-keepers to extend their control over the prostitutes and establish a vast network of patronage with the police, based on blackmail, corruption and intimate relationships.