Susan Bennett

The Infamous Mrs. Gallagher: Prolific Victorian Brothel Keeper Susan Bennett

Social Evil, or prostitution, was rife in Victorian Britain despite the many attempts to contain it. The law courts were a battle ground as passionate speakers exhorted respectable Victorian gentlemen and their good ladies to support them. In their quest for suppression and repression, with prostitutes their satanic enemy they were up against Madams like Jane Gallagher who made the most of it, winning court case after court case, as well as living a remarkable life!'Why, there is not a place of public amusement in the whole of the city which is not utilised night after night by some class of women or other for assignations; even the newspapers as you know, are daily made the medium of some meeting or other; you will find a batch of them in some editions. You would be astonished if I told you the number and character of certain places. They include every kind I should think; business houses, private houses, hotels, restaurants etc - anything, in fact, with walls and a ceiling. 'But at the end of the day there was no stopping social evil. As Josephine Butler said: 'It is a fatuous belief that you can oblige human beings to be moral by force, and in so doing that you may in some way promote social purity.'