Uprooting “Fleurs de Trottoirs": Displacing Clandestine Prostitution and Negotiating Respectable Sex in Colonial Martinique, 1938–47

The first laws regulating prostitution in Martinique passed in the 1850s, shortly after the abolition of slavery in all French “old” colonies. In practice, however, little effort was made to implement them. It was not until the late 1930s, with the emergence of tourism and the outbreak of World War II, that a new set of laws was designed and actually enforced. Rather than attempting to keep prostitutes away from public spaces—as initial laws did—they targeted “clandestine” prostitution, which thrived in bars and restaurants, and constituted in the eyes of colonial authorities the main vector of venereal diseases in Fort-de-France. Consequently, all waitresses and hostesses, prostitutes or not, were constrained to hold a valid certificat de non contagiosité to work, a measure many resented for unjustly stigmatizing them. Despite these efforts, French colonial ultimate goal to supplant clandestine prostitution with brothel prostitution failed, as women refused to work in the latter, and restaurants and bars around the city harbor remained prime sites for sailors, soldiers, and dockworkers in search of sexual encounters. The law Marthe Richard, which closed all brothels in the French metropole and in Martinique in 1946 and 1947, respectively, put an end to colonial aspirations to revamp prostitution on the island. What colonial and medical authorities inadvertently achieved, I argue, was to redefine the boundary between respectable sex and transactional sex. In focusing solely on clandestine prostitution, they overlooked a less visible yet prevalent form of prostitution, that of kept women, which involved the most “desirable” women—young and light-skinned women who lived off the sexual services they provided to a few well-off men. Using legal texts, medical reports, police records, personal letters, and oral interviews, this paper shows how mid-twentieth century prostitution laws delineated “deviant” sex along the lines of age, class, and race.