Off the Streets

London might never be quite the same again. The nightly parade of prostitutes--between 10,000 and 20,000 of them standing in doorways, congregating in parks, calling cheerful invitations to passers-by --was now over. At the Bow Street police court, where some 400 girls a week once methodically plunked down their token -L-2 ($5.60) fine, only twelve girls were brought in in the same amount of time. For the first time in years, proper Londoners took their families picnicking in parts of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens that were once favorite stalking grounds of whores. Even the handful of girls picked up seemed to have caught the spirit of reform, or at least said they had. "I've got quite a bit of my earnings salted away," said one, "and in a fortnight I start work as a trainee bacteriologist." From noisy Piccadilly Circus through upper-crust Mayfair to genteel Bayswater, London's streets were clean.

But from its very beginnings in the controversial Wolfenden Report (TIME, Sept. 16, 1957), the Street Offenses Act had seemed to many Britons to be a makeshift act at best (Wolfenden's other proposal, that the homosexual laws be eased, has been quietly shelved). The new act increased the fine for first-offending prostitutes from -L-2 to -L-10 ($28), confronted the third offender with the prospiect of spending three months in jail. As the Lord Chancellor explained, it was not meant to punish the prostitute for "fornication, but for the nuisance created by advertising her wares." "The bill," huffed the News Chronicle, "is a sad example of British hypocrisy. It is concerned with appearances at the cost of justice and the risk of spreading corruption. Prostitution will be driven deeper into the darkness of the underworld."

After less than a week, it seemed as if some of the Chronicle's gloomy forebodings might be justified. In Soho, prostitutes no longer "advertised their wares," but girls stood in dimly lit doorways to inveigle passing males into what they whispered were "bars with plenty of good-fun girls." In new cars, women cruised about, offering lifts to men. From the Tower of London to Trafalgar Square, touts slipped cards with telephone numbers into the hands of male tourists. Real estate operators reported an avalanche of calls from young women wanting rooms with telephones. In some places, small, under-the-counter booklets made their appearance bearing on their covers the words: "On Sale to Adults Only. New Personal Advertisements. Latest Edition." And in the windows of newsagents all over town appeared a rash of personal notices signed Jane or Molly or Thelma, professing themselves "photographers' models" or "masseuses."

Still, at long last, London at night seemed more like the staid self of its reputation.

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