Resisting the Wartime Order: Policing Sex Work in Lyon, 1914-1918

Based on material from several archives, this paper explores the confrontation between sex workers and police in one of France’s major cities during the Great War. Like other major urban centers, the regulation of prostitution in Lyon had been controversial prior to 1914. However, by the middle of the war the Lyon police discerned a deeper, intensifying crisis. Sex workers, police reports complained, were increasingly harder to control, while rising rates of venereal disease led to tensions with the military authorities. While the voices of the women involved emerge only rarely in the archival record, by 1917 there were reported protests from the sex workers about their treatment by the authorities, leading to concerns about the image of the police and a decline in public order. Despite intensified surveillance and new strategies, the policing of prostitution became and remained a central feature of the multifaceted crisis of Lyon’s home front until 1918.