Nothing much changed in 150 years
Posted: Thu Oct 07, 2010 1:27 pm
Nor sure if this should go here or the O/T, anyway...
Found this in the anthology of diary entries I keep for bedtime reading!innocent!
From the diary of Arthur F Munby 7 December 1860 (only 20 years after photography was invented)
'Going into a shop to buy some photographs the shopman, who was also a photographer, brought out by the way of temptation various portraits of nude and semi-nude women which he himself had taken. I enquired what manner of women they were who were willing to have pictures of their naked bodies taken , and sold to strangers at 2 shillings each; of course, they are virtually prostitutes?
"NOT at all, Sir!" cries the worthy photographer, indignant: "this one" (holding up a stark naked figure) "is herself an artist and was a governess. No, No, they wouldn't do anything of that: a girl has no need to go onto the streets when she can earn five or six pounds a week by this sort of thing!
Nearly ?300 a year to be earned by simply sitting in a chair without any clothes on; no wonder such a trade is preferred to the hard and self accusing life of a prostitute! Nevertheless one would say on the whole that these delicate gradations of female modesty are somewhat inexplicable to the coarser masculine mind...'
I recall similar thoughts expressed on here from time to time !laugh!
Apparently, indexed to average earnings, ?300 would be about ?100,000 today.
Found this in the anthology of diary entries I keep for bedtime reading!innocent!
From the diary of Arthur F Munby 7 December 1860 (only 20 years after photography was invented)
'Going into a shop to buy some photographs the shopman, who was also a photographer, brought out by the way of temptation various portraits of nude and semi-nude women which he himself had taken. I enquired what manner of women they were who were willing to have pictures of their naked bodies taken , and sold to strangers at 2 shillings each; of course, they are virtually prostitutes?
"NOT at all, Sir!" cries the worthy photographer, indignant: "this one" (holding up a stark naked figure) "is herself an artist and was a governess. No, No, they wouldn't do anything of that: a girl has no need to go onto the streets when she can earn five or six pounds a week by this sort of thing!
Nearly ?300 a year to be earned by simply sitting in a chair without any clothes on; no wonder such a trade is preferred to the hard and self accusing life of a prostitute! Nevertheless one would say on the whole that these delicate gradations of female modesty are somewhat inexplicable to the coarser masculine mind...'
I recall similar thoughts expressed on here from time to time !laugh!
Apparently, indexed to average earnings, ?300 would be about ?100,000 today.