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Reviewed by:
  • Prostitution and Irish Society, 1800–1940
  • Jacqueline R. deVries
Prostitution and Irish Society, 1800–1940. By Maria Luddy (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2007) 352 pp. $80.00 cloth $29.99 paper

Ambitiously broad titles, chosen to enhance a book's narrowly defined contents, are a current publishing fad. In this case, however, the title is apt. Luddy's carefully researched work covers a wide territory and provides rich material for further analysis of Irish women and gender, sexuality and health, colonialism and nationalism, and their varied intersections. Luddy's extensive empirical evidence reflects years of archival research and challenges some central myths in Irish historiography.

Prostitution has long been a sensitive issue in Ireland. Since the early twentieth century, when nationalists convinced the population that British occupation was the main source of prostitution and venereal disease, even scholars have promoted the idea of Irish sexual purity. Luddy gently but firmly challenges this myth with reams of evidence about Ireland's bawdy houses, brothels, Magdalen asylums, and the memorable "Wrens of Curragh" (women who lived like birds in bushes outside of the Curragh army camp in County Kildare). In six dense chapters, Luddy explores prostitutes' lives and communities; the varieties of secular and religious rescue work; attitudes toward, and treatment of, venereal disease; and the politicization of women's sexuality among turn-of-the-century [End Page 92] feminists and nationalists. Luddy concludes with a fascinating chapter on prostitution in the Irish Republic, when the debates and approaches to sexual immorality abruptly changed: "Once independence was achieved the focus on women, and their moral regenerative powers, became central to the idea of the Irish nation" (197).

Drawing on an exceptionally wide range of sources—including court records, newspaper articles, and charity reports, Luddy finds an unexpected variety in women's situations. Prostitutes were married, single, and widowed, as young as fourteen and as old as seventy. Some were high-class madams of the Elliot Spitzer variety; others lived in ditches. They plied their trade in industrialized cities like Belfast, where prostitution appeared more attractive than factory labor, and rural regions like Roscommon. Predictably, many congregated around military posts. Luddy's sensitivity toward geographical diversity is helpful, although the sheer mass of data that she presents begs for additional maps and tables.

Official reactions to prostitution in the nineteenth century ranged from complacency to containment to zealous defense of public safety. Prostitution was not officially prohibited, but police found any number of pretexts to arrest suspicious women for vagrancy or loitering. Clergy joined the fray and occasionally pushed women around on the streets. Military officials, not surprisingly, tended to remain silent. Sporadic concerns about public health created "moments of panic," spurring slum clearance and neighborhood sweeps, but, overall, the official record was one of benign neglect. Many believed private and religious-based rescue efforts to be the best approach; between 1765 and 1914, at least forty refuges or Magdalen asylums were established to rescue fallen women, many of which survived until the 1990s. These asylums, Luddy argues, were more flexible and accommodating than previously thought, and sought more to protect women than punish them.

Luddy's effort to analyze prostitution within the context of Ireland's shifting political culture is a strength, but some will find her empirical approach unsatisfying. Future studies might build on her achievement by employing comparative approaches and delving further into discursive analyses of gender. Only then will we fully understand the impact of British colonialism on Ireland's sexual subcultures.

Jacqueline R. deVries
Augsburg College
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