This paper examines debates over the places and spaces of prostitution in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Liverpool, and the role of the state in regulating not just commercial sexuality, but also ‘parasexual’ spaces
such as the bar and public house. In late nineteenth-century Britain, the state’s growing responsibility for managing urban ...
(Show more)This paper examines debates over the places and spaces of prostitution in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Liverpool, and the role of the state in regulating not just commercial sexuality, but also ‘parasexual’ spaces
such as the bar and public house. In late nineteenth-century Britain, the state’s growing responsibility for managing urban space and the behaviour of its citizens, and its inevitable conflict with social purists and social hygienists as well as workers, entrepreneurs and business owners, contributed to the development of new conceptions of citizenship. In this developing understanding of the role of state and citizen, the nature of sexuality was reworked and reordered. In this paper, we consider the central and local state response to sex work, but also the role of bargirls and businesses in challenging attempts to police sexuality and parasexuality from public space. Liverpool, as the British city with the greatest number of police prosecutions for prostitution offences, and the
city with arguably the most developed links between prostitution and the business of drinking, is a critical case study for this turn of the century
remaking of the spaces of sexual citizenship.
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