History
The history of prostitution in Australia is best considered in three periods: the convict period to 1840, the late colonial period and the Federal period (after 1901). It is generally agreed that prostitution was unknown in the pre-colonial period, but arose once early settlers arrived and started exchanging sexual services from aboriginal women with European goods, exploiting a preexisting aboriginal wife exchange system.
During the convict period English common law was operative, and dealt with brothel keeping, disorderly houses and public nuisance. The late colonial period concentrated on prostitution as a public health issue, through the Contagious Diseases Acts. Finally the Federal period was driven by prohibition through criminalising activities associated with prostitution. Although not explicitly prohibiting the act of sexual exchange, the criminal law effectively produced a de facto prohibition.
Read more about this topic: Prostitution In Australia
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)