Logan, an English city missionary with an extensive acquaintance with prostitutes, divided them into the following groups: (1) One-fourth of the girls are servants, especially in public houses, beer shops, etc., and thus led into the life; (2) one-fourth come from factories, etc.; (3) nearly one-fourth are recruited by procuresses who visit country towns, markets, etc.; (4) a final group includes, on the one hand, those who are induced to become prostitutes by destitution, or indolence, or a bad temper, which unfits them for ordinary avocations, and, on the other hand, those who have been seduced by a false promise of marriage (W. Logan, _The Great Social Evil_, 1871, p. 53).
In America Sanger has reported the results of inquiries made of two thousand New York prostitutes as to the causes which induced them to take up their avocation:
Destitution 525 Inclination 513 Seduced and abandoned 258 Drink and desire for drink 181 Ill-treatment by parents, relations, or husbands 164 As an easy life 124 Bad company 84 Persuaded by prostitutes 71 Too idle to work 29 Violated 27 Seduced on emigrant ship 16 Seduced in emigrant boarding homes 8 ----- 2,000
(Sanger, _History of Prostitution_, p. 488.)
In America, again, more recently, Professor Woods Hutchinson put himself into communication with some thirty representative men in various great metropolitan centres, and thus summarizes the answers as regards the etiology of prostitution:
Love of display, luxury and idleness 42.1 Bad family surroundings 23.8 Seduction in which they were innocent victims 11.3 Lack of employment 9.4 Heredity 7.8 Primary sexual appetite 5.6
(Woods Hutchinson, "The Economics of Prostitution," _American Gynæcologic and Obstetric Journal_, September, 1895; _Id., The Gospel According to Darwin_, p. 194.)
In Italy, in 1881, among 10,422 inscribed prostitutes from the age of seventeen upwards, the causes of prostitution were classified as follows:
Vice and depravity 2,752 Death of parents, husband, etc. 2,139 Seduction by lover 1,653 Seduction by employer 927 Abandoned by parents, husband, etc. 794 Love of luxury 698 Incitement by lover or other persons outside family 666 Incitement by parents or husband 400 To support parents or children 393