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the book collector which included information on each woman’s place of birth, the occupation of her father, the determining causes of her becoming a prostitute, her education level, the number of children she had as well as the age at which she registered as a prostitute. (The ages ranged from ten to sixty-five.)11 Yet within this methodical work, I found one bit of whimsy, certainly unintended, that called to mind my Dictionnaire: in a chapter on the pseudonyms prostitutes gave themselves, Parent included a double-columned table of these assumed names, arranged by social class. The first column contains the Classe Inférieure, including such ribald, lewd and comical nicknames as Rousselette (Little Red Pear), Poil-Long (Long Hair), Belle-Cuisse (Nice Thighs) Faux-Cul (FakeAss) and Raton (Little Rat). In the second column, the Classe Elevée, are such names as Amanda, Calliope, Delphine, Paméla, Olympe, and Flore, names associated with Greek mythology, literature or the upper class. This classification by descriptive name was maintained throughout the century, helping men choose women based not only on her physical attributes, but also on what class she was likely to be from as revealed in her nickname. Later, the astute and often pontifical observer of women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Octave Uzanne, used the exact same method to describe Parisian prostitutes in 1910: ‘At the very bottom of the ladder is the woman who haunts the fortifications…The soldiers do not even know her name; they call her la paillasse…A much more formidable species of prostitute is the gigolette [who] is almost always young, and often pretty…There are grades and degrees in all this peripatetic prostitution…In Paris, there are about 60,000 filles insoumises. They constitute the main part of what [is] called middle-class prostitution.’ As for upper-class prostitution, Uzanne refers to it as ‘clandestine prostitution’ and the women who represent it are known as belles petites, tendresses, agenouillées, horizontales and dégrafées. He also refers to Parent, complaining that of all the writers on prostitution who 11. This sort of documentation, initially called ‘moral statistics,’ was a new field, founded by André-Michel Guerry (1802–1866), a lawyer, statistician and colleague of Parent. Many of the tables and diagrams in Parent’s work derive from those in Guerry’s pioneering book, Essai sur la statistique morale de la France, 1833. 52
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The two books that formed the basis of my inquiry. The small red book is the Dictionnaire Anecdotique des Nymphes du Palais-Royal; the two-volume set is De La Prostitution dans La Ville de Paris. © Victoria Dailey

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the book collector which included information on each woman’s place of birth, the occupation of her father, the determining causes of her becoming a prostitute, her education level, the number of children she had as well as the age at which she registered as a prostitute. (The ages ranged from ten to sixty-five.)11

Yet within this methodical work, I found one bit of whimsy, certainly unintended, that called to mind my Dictionnaire: in a chapter on the pseudonyms prostitutes gave themselves, Parent included a double-columned table of these assumed names, arranged by social class. The first column contains the Classe Inférieure, including such ribald, lewd and comical nicknames as Rousselette (Little Red Pear), Poil-Long (Long Hair), Belle-Cuisse (Nice Thighs) Faux-Cul (FakeAss) and Raton (Little Rat). In the second column, the Classe Elevée, are such names as Amanda, Calliope, Delphine, Paméla, Olympe, and Flore, names associated with Greek mythology, literature or the upper class. This classification by descriptive name was maintained throughout the century, helping men choose women based not only on her physical attributes, but also on what class she was likely to be from as revealed in her nickname. Later, the astute and often pontifical observer of women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Octave Uzanne, used the exact same method to describe Parisian prostitutes in 1910:

‘At the very bottom of the ladder is the woman who haunts the fortifications…The soldiers do not even know her name; they call her la paillasse…A much more formidable species of prostitute is the gigolette [who] is almost always young, and often pretty…There are grades and degrees in all this peripatetic prostitution…In Paris, there are about 60,000 filles insoumises. They constitute the main part of what [is] called middle-class prostitution.’ As for upper-class prostitution, Uzanne refers to it as ‘clandestine prostitution’ and the women who represent it are known as belles petites, tendresses, agenouillées, horizontales and dégrafées. He also refers to Parent, complaining that of all the writers on prostitution who

11. This sort of documentation, initially called ‘moral statistics,’ was a new field, founded by André-Michel Guerry (1802–1866), a lawyer, statistician and colleague of Parent. Many of the tables and diagrams in Parent’s work derive from those in Guerry’s pioneering book, Essai sur la statistique morale de la France, 1833.

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