Should they decriminalise soliciting

jbf if the clients knew there was an area where they could get sex in a safe environment they would go there - just like when you purchase anything. Most cities have "red light districts" (hate that phrase) and that's where the clients travel to now.

I saw an interesting programme about a brothel in Sheffield.

It was in a house on a main road, in a seedy area. It was run by a mother and daughter, like a home from home. They served teas and sandwiches to their regular clients and put up a Christmas tree and paper chains in December.
Many visitors were pensioners and came in for a chat and for company. Lovely atmosphere, maybe unusual, don't know. They all knew one another with no problems , most strange.

Perhaps. But the licensing of brothels could well change that.

I have no idea if they are on the streets, but assume as they are allowed to solicit by sitting in windows that they also do so by other means, probably on the streets.

My post there was in reply to sunseeker

Think that may have been the one I saw Lully. I was bemused as it was like a social club with extras. And one of the girls in particular, seemed to love her work. Not sure if it would satisfy the thrill seekers though (see my point re George Michael). It's certainly a complicated problem though and like a lot of things, not just black and white. Thanks for all your contributions re your thoughts. I have to go now as I have a 'numb bum' but will look in later.

jbf not if the licensed brothels were limited to a certain area. Any operating outside that area would be closed down.

You could hardly get more "suburban" than Ambleside Avenue in Streatham !!(Cynthia Payne's house)
The people to criminalise are the pimps, the sex worker traffickers, all the people exploiting women who are often trapped in the trade.
Licensing would bring health checks , security for the women and possibly likewise for the punters.
However for a lot of people, recognition of prostitution is tantamount to approval.
Not very enlightened I fear.

The moral and ethical side needs to be considered separately from the practical side. There are two questions.

Should the sex act be sold for money?
If sex is performed for money, then how should that sale be conducted?

I don't even know an answer to the first. In an ideal world, every man and woman sould have a loving partner, with whom they have a joyful physical relationship which fulfils all their needs, and no-one is driven by frustration to buy it, take it by force, or sublimate the need for it into twisted violence. Yeah, right.

A brothel is not something that can be easily managed by your average business man or woman. It takes someone who knows the practical side of the business from the bottom up, so to speak, but has intelligence and management ability, skills with money to keep it maintained and the bills paid, a formidable enough presence to deal with any client who oversteps the house rules, the diplomacy to talk to people in authority, humanity toward the girls who work there.

These are not qualities that are associated with many brothel-keepers.

In Edinburgh there used to be a brothel run by Dora Noyce in a house at 17 Danube Street. Its presence was common knowledge. Take a look on Google Earth for the kind of Georgian town house, and in the property pages for the current prices of such houses.

It thrived for 30 years and catered for all classes. Apparently it did a lot of business during the Festival and when the Assembly of the Church Of Scotland ministers were taking place, and the busiest time ever was in 1970 when the aircraft carrier USS John F Kennedy was docked at Leith. The queue of sailors went right round the corner into Ann Street.

The girls were well looked after and any trouble was quelled at once. Any neighbour whose property was damaged by an impatient drunken would-be client was compensated at once. Mrs Noyce was arrested from time to time and charged 47 times for living on immoral earnings. She paid up her fine, went home and got on with running the business - a prim-looking little Edinburgh Tory lady in twinset and pearls and fur coat.

When she died, the girls continued to work in the house, independently and without the administration that she had organised. There was more noise, more violence, more trouble with the police. The house came to be viewed as a public nuisance, and finally closed down in 1977.

The ORDER that had been kept had gone.

Then there are those who don't wish to sell within that order, or to buy within that order, and those who want a perverted service which only those most in need of a few pounds will submit to.

Regulating ALL of this traffic would be a gargantuan task. How do you regulate someone who puts out on a casual basis when she doesn't have the rent? How do you regulate a punter who knows that his request will not be on the price list of a respectable registered establishment which looks after its staff and is aware that regular inspection will reveal the scars and bruises?

I have just read a mokst excellent book, "The Crimson Petal and the White " by Michel Faber.

Reading this gives a window on a different world. The theme is Victorian women - real women, in a society where the world of prostitution is completely one where the buyer is king (although a frequently deceived king) - and king also in the home.

It is a novel, by the way, about some vividly believable characters, not a dry tome.

The aristocracy have always been very much for sex for title and money

The aristocracy are/were not the only ones to use prostitutes. In general the aristocracy go in for expensive callgirls and the poorer classes for cheap whores, but neither preference is exclusive.

Do you mean marriage for title and money? Marriage for both those things has always been popular with those who either have no title but hope their wealth will help acquire one for their children (their grandchildren when they dangle a daughter as bait) or those who have a title but no money, and hope that their title will attract someone from a family with money but no "breeding" to marry them.

No-one in the book I refer to is from the aristocracy - the characters range from the owner of a successful perfumery business, his virgin bride, a "do-gooder" shunned by her respectable and hypocritical social equals, a would-be man of God plagued equally by his pure but very physical desire for the do-gooder and his obsession with thoughts of the impure women she tries to save, a woman of the streets who rises to the heights of being a kept woman and then to a respectable position but loses that, tarts with various specialities, and madams with varying levels of care for their girls.

Written down like that, it sounds like a penny dreadful melodrama with pornograpic episodes. It is actually a moving account of the lives of women with very little control over their lives, whatever their background or social standing.

Legalise and regulate prostitution. Always will be men and women looking to buy sex. I do not think it stops rape though, part of the reasons why men rape is power over women and paying for sex makes the woman more powerful. She is the one controlling the situation, making the business transaction. If prostitution stopped rape, there would be no rape. You can buy sex anywhere. Make it safe and clean for both parties. In safe surroundings. The sad thing is even if it is legalised, it won't stop girls and boys being peddled and sold into the sex trade. A trade which is a huge problem in this country.

Elegran, I meant marriage for title and marriage with a title for money

My cousin went through a very difficult time in her life with virtually no money. She turned to prostitution to survive. She got out of it as soon as she could.

She now deals in antiques and that dark side of her life is a thing of the past.

I am proud of her and tell her so occasionally.

I often wonder if I had no money, family or back up if I would have survived in that way. I was fortunate as I had a kind, caring family who looked after me well.

anniebach The number of people marrying without affection to get a title is vanishingly small compared to the number of people without titles buying or selling a sexual experience.