Prostitution: in 1913, when the slave trade to Algeria passed through the liners of Port-Vendres

L'une des premières prostituées fichées par la Brigade du Tigre à Perpignan, dès 1911. ADH 34

At the beginning of the 20th century, prostitution in brothels was legal and controlled by the state. But that did not prevent the police of the time from fighting against the networks of pimps who took young women, sometimes minors, by force, and in particular to establishments located in Algeria. ;

Perpignan station, April 20, 1913, 8:30 a.m. Commissioner Degoutte and three inspectors from the Montpellier Tiger brigade, created a year ago to fight against organized crime in Languedoc-Roussillon, all three in civilian clothes, are on the lookout . Their target: a sixty-year-old accompanied by two young girls, who takes train tickets to Port-Vendres. On arrival, he leaves the travelers at the Hôtel des Paquebots, and goes to the post office to telegraph Madame Maria, rue Caftan, in Algiers.

One word: "I'm coming." The police take action: the man is arrested, the telegram seized, the girls questioned. 

And they tell. Juliette, 17, comes from Place du Puig, in Perpignan. "With my parents, I worked the land then I was employed as a servant." That's where she knew the one who took her to the boat for Algeria."With his wife they persuaded me to go to Algiers to be employed as a servant and to engage in prostitution. They did so well in showing me that I would earn a lot of money, that I agreed."

The one who accompanies him, Marie, 17 years old, tells the same story. Raised at the Convent of Miséricorde in Perpignan, until she was 15, she then became a maid in a café in Millas, run by a couple. "They informed me that I had to engage in prostitution with them. Every day I made about one pass, the price was paid directly to the boss, I didn't see a penny."

She finds another café, where she receives 50 centimes per customer, then meets Juliette, a week earlier, and agrees to try the Algerian adventure.

The sixty-year-old who accompanies them denies it, then confesses, admitting that the girls were not that willing. "Last Sunday I took Juliette to Port-Vendres but she hid when the boat left and I had to put it back travels to today."

The investigation then passed a second phase: in May 1913, Commissioner Robert, from the Montpellier Tiger brigade, arrived in Algiers to lead a vast police operation. On May 27, five simultaneous searches were carried out at Hirondelles, the Hôtel des Voyageurs, the Queen of Spades, the Panier and the Moon.

The police discovered around twenty minors there, and others, adults, all forced into prostitution. Estreilla, 19, was brought from Spain two months earlier. "I was supposed to earn an honest living there but I was delivered to the landing in a brothel. When I wanted to leave, the boss threatened me with razor blows if I didn't do a six-month internship there."

Jeanne, 38 years old, who has been a prostitute for seven years in Montpellier, Nice and Sète, was hired in this Algerian brothel by the manager of a furnished apartment near the Montpellier station, "a former horsewoman, lame". Antoinette, 27 years old, explains that the boss told her that he would have my face cut off if I tried to leave.< /em>

Four brothel owners will be imprisoned. There we find the boss of the Hôtel des Voyageurs, Laurent Gr., who had six daughters under his influence. "Let us mention that Gr. has a detestable reputation and that his immorality is such that he often forces his wife to witness his coitus with girls from his establishment" writes the commissioner. And Eugène Go., nicknamed "the’Ace of Spades", who manages the Queen of Spades with his wife Victorine. "Go. came to Perpignan himself to request and obtain from G. père authorization for his daughter to prostitute herself." As for Le Palmier, rue Caftan and run by Maria,"numerous girls and documents prove that she has been engaged in trafficking in white women for a long time and more particularly in minors sent from Bordeaux, Marseille, Avignon. The residents are treated quite well and have good memories of them after their departure. This is how they nickname Maria the Grandmother, but the concern of this singular grandmother is great for her grandchildren because, without their knowledge, she keeps all the letters from outside that come with her. could encourage residents to leave the establishment."

The pimps go to prison, while the police release the girls, reminding them that they are free not to return to work there.

"The arrival at the Sûreté of this entire battalion of women, some in noisy toilets, others in hair, had provoked in the street from Tangier, as well as their departure, a movement of lively curiosity" reports the local newspaper.

But beyond the folklore, it is indeed a structured criminal organization which has been dismantled, as Commissioner Robert underlines in his report.

"We are in the presence of a vast association of traffickers who for many years have hired or had hired in France and abroad with impunity foreigner of minor girls whom they deliver into prostitution, to hand them over, when they have ceased to please customers, to other traffickers."< /em>