Pound / Franc exchange rate & a Brothel tale

[catfishmo]

Brothels & exchange rate: I was reading through some old notes and came upon these two things in the same reference. For someone researching, they might be hard to track down.

From: Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves.

I'll quote from my handwritten notes--this may or may not be a direct quote from the book from p 122:

The Red Lamp, the Army brothel. "I had seen ques of 150 men waiting each to have his turn with one of the three women inside. The charge, 10 francs/man (8 shillings). Each woman served nearly a battalion of men every week for as long as she lasted--usually 3 weeks after which she retired on her earnings, pale but proud."

I found an article somewhere else online about brothels, but apparently there is not just a whole lot about them for obvious reasons. Reading this makes me sick...

~Ginger

[johnboy]

Reading this makes me sick...

Maybe you shouldn't have posted it?

The cost was 8 days pay for infantry private.

Today the cost would be a lot less as a percentage of weekly wage!

[Muerrisch]

I have no idea of the going rate myself .........................

as for friend Robt. Graves, he never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

[ianw]

I understand that by 1916 the British Army had 9000 hospital beds provided to deal with men with STD's . I have read that alcohol , prices as low as 1 franc for sexual services and enthusiastic amateurs were blamed for the large increase in disease. Conventional morality breaks down in time of war with people grasping opportunities for companionship.

[Muerrisch]

I understand that by 1916 the British Army had 9000 hospital beds provided to deal with men with STD's . I have read that alcohol , prices as low as 1 franc for sexual services and enthusiastic amateurs were blamed for the large increase in disease. Conventional morality breaks down in time of war with people grasping opportunities for companionship.

Increase! You are surely joking!

Quote:

..... in 1899 .....never less than one man in ten, and for most of the period since 1860 ........ one in five or an even higher proportion ........ underwent treatment [for VD] each year.

Skelley The Victorian Army at Home

The soldiers of the Great War were either startlingly celibate, lucky or careful.

[ianw]

..... in 1899 .....never less than one man in ten, and for most of the period since 1860 ........ one in five or an even higher proportion ........ underwent treatment [for VD] each year.

Yes, but army numbers throughout the 19th C (until the Boer War) were circa 100,000. Of course numbers of STD affected men did not rise in direct prortion to army size - thank goodness.

But 60,000 VD admissions in 1918 in France & Flanders alone illustrates the huge size of the problem. But I agree if they had all behaved as badly as the 19th C regular , the number may have been a war losing 600,000!

[Dai Bach y Sowldiwr]

Graphs of STDs for the last century show massive peaks at 1914-18 and 1939-45.

And similar peaks for the Korean and Vietnam Wars where the Americans in particular noted an increase in penicillin resistant gonorrhoea.

Urban medical lore attributes the beginning of the alcohol/antibiotics myth to this period.

Everybody "knows" you mustn't drink alcohol and take antibiotics because they interact/don't work/give you side effectsor kill you.

Only Metronidazole and it's derivatives really interact badly with alcohol, it converts it into formaldehyde in your body, and is quite nasty, but generally not fatal.

Other antibiotics work Ok with alcohol, and don't interact.

But, in the 1940s & 50s, American Army doctors were so displeased with the GIs getting blind drunk in South East Asian fleshpots, and catching a dose, that they decided to start a moral crusade

The rationale being that the soldier, having got drunk once and caught an STD, has to be punished for his immoral behaviour.

So, he is told that he must'nt drink whilst he's on the antibiotics.

And that becomes the accepted fact.