This book makes an analysis of prostitution in Cambridge in the Victorian period
based on different social and cultural discourses as well as on archival materials
concerning institutions devoted to the control and regulation of promiscuity
and venereal disease. Among them were the Cambridge Union Workhouse, the
Cambridge Female Refuge, the Spinning House (Cambridge University Female
Prison) or the town and county gaols. Also, data from the census and local
and state regulations are of great relevance in the approach to the study of the
“Great Social Evil” and its consequences for Victorian Cambridge. The city was
divided into “town and gown” at the time, with the University having its power
and regulation over all its premises through the Vice-Chancellor’s Court and its
system of proctors, while the town council regulated the areas belonging to the
city itself through the police. Therefore, University authorities, evangelicals and the
middle-class joined their efforts to put an end to immorality, building Cambridge’s
architecture of containment of sexual deviance.
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