Maggie Mae

I have just found out that there was a traditional song about prostitution in Liverpool. The Beatles were one of the groups that sang it.

Oh dirty Maggie Mae they have taken her away
And she never walk down Lime Street any more
Oh the judge he guilty found her
For robbing a homeward bounder
That dirty no good robbin' Maggie Mae
To the port of Liverpool
They returned me to
Two pounds ten a week, that was my pay.

I didn't realize that Lime Street was the Red Light District of Liverpool at one time. I also didn't realise that Maggie was the slang word for prostitute.

You would think it would be somewhere nearer the docks, because of all the sailors. I did locate somewhere near the docks in Liverpool but it was outcall only so I forgot about it. It might have been Secrets Escorts. I always wondered how that worked. Women would go to hotels near the docks where their customers were staying. If a man was resident on a ship would he try to smuggle a woman on board? Perhaps several men would invite one woman to be with them overnight.

Anyone would think you haven't seen a woman for months!

I read that there used to be a system where a sailor would stay with a woman overnight in her house or flat. She would cook for him, perhaps an evening meal and breakfast the next day. They would spend the night together. Sex workers often like to have a number of regular clients. Then they don't have to continue to find men.

That's a much better system than street prostitution, the sort that I encountered in Hope Street in the 1980s. Another system could be if there was a large room with tables and chairs. The room is divided into two. Women would come in through one door and men through another. The men could look at the women, a man could ask to talk to one he likes. Or she could ask to talk to him. They could agree a price then go to a bedroom. It's not a brothel, women would pay an hourly rate for a room.

Women would not be employees there. They would go there when they feel like it, perhaps with their friends. If they needed the money that day or if someone was looking after the kids. A woman could go as frequently or as infrequently as she liked. It would be a bit like a hotel.

There is also Temple Spa 21 near the centre of Liverpool, at 21 Temple Street. If you pay their minimum price you get a massage and a topless wank. If you pay more she will take all her clothes off.

Paul Curtis has created a mural of Maggie Mae, who was apparently a real person.

The Duke of Westminster

I have just finished reading the biography of Gerald Grosvenor, the 6th Duke of Westminster. It is called The Reluctant Billionaire by Tom Quinn. There was a big scandal a few years ago when it was revealed that Grosvenor had spent lots of money on high-class prostitutes.

A journalist had interviewed a number of these girls and this is what he said:-

"They told me that it was either being an escort girl or doing cleaning jobs, which paid almost nothing and were often degrading. One said, 'If I had stayed at home it was poverty - no job, no life, no fun. In London I could live like a princess but only working as an escort girl. I could have been a cleaner or worked in a coffee bar for the minimum wage so I had to choose. I thought it would be better to sleep with the super-rich - even if they were old and boring and sometimes ugly!'"

Despite being a billionaire, Grosvenor didn't usually ask for the most expensive of the escorts from the agency that he used. They would have cost £5,000 per hour. Instead he usually paid between £500 and £1,000 per hour. The most expensive option would have been to pay £30,000 for one of the most expensive escorts to spend the whole day or night with him, but we don't know if he ever did that.

Of course, this is at the opposite end of what I have been doing, spending £50 or less for half an hour. In Soho, I used to spend £20 for 10 minutes. I think it is still true though that nearly all sex workers in Britain are not coerced and could work as a cleaner or in a coffee bar. The Radical Feminists and the Evangelical Christians tell people that women are coerced by violent pimps and not paid or they are in danger of homelessness or hunger.

Migrants come to Britain to avoid homelessness or hunger. Most don't choose sex work. They work as cleaners, in a coffee bar or somewhere else. Cleaners can be victims of modern day slavery and so can others, including sex workers. This is rare though.

The escorts said that Grosvenor was boring and the opposite of generous, but he wasn't abusive. I've often wondered why abusers like Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris did what they did. They could have paid for beautiful escort girls, as Gerald Grosvenor did, but instead they seemed to want to harm and upset women and girls.

One aspect of this book is that there is an attempt to explain why Grosvenor wanted to see escorts. It's as if people think that it is such aberrant behaviour that it needs to be explained psychologically, as a personality flaw caused by childhood unhappiness. It is said that he had a loveless childhood and was traumatised by his boarding school. This would have caused him to seek sex without involvement.

Yet we know that he was married, so it's not as if he avoided involvement. People sometimes think that men who pay for sex are unwilling or unable to form relationships. They pay for it because they can't get it in the usual way.

When you think what his ancestor, the 2nd Duke of Westminster, got up to it is difficult to see the 6th Duke as such a flawed person. The 2nd Duke - Hugh Grosvenor - and his contemporaries did not lead peaceful and contented lives. Drunkenness, divorce, promiscuity, casual relationships, gambling-addiction, suicide and drug-taking were very much part of their lives. The Queen had an uncle, Prince George Duke of Kent, who was a drug addict.

Gerald Grosvenor married Natalia Phillips. Her father was Bunny Phillips, who was Lady Mountbatten's lover. I was already aware of some of Lady Mountbatten's lovers (Leslie Hutchinson, Lord Molyneaux and Laddie Sanford) but Bunny Phillips was one I hadn't heard of. It seems you don’t have to be ladylike to be a Lady.

The aristocrat with the most interesting love life of the inter-war period, the period of Hugh Grosvenor and Lady Mountbatten, was Marmaduke Furness - 1st Viscount Furness. He had 3 wives. He was accused of murdering his first wife*. If he had been found guilty he would have been hanged, but it is said that as a peer of the realm it would have been with a silken rope.

His second wife was Thelma Morgan. As Thelma Furness she became mistress of the Prince of Wales and lover of Aly Khan (playboy son of the Aga Khan). His third wife was Enid Lindeman. He was her third husband (she had tried to get Hugh Grosvenor interested in her). She smoked opium and injected heroin. She had been married to a Brigadier General in Cairo and it is said she had sex with the entire regiment for a dare*.

Drinking and betting are a part of many if not most people's lives. Few people have long and happy marriages. If I buy bottles of whisky or lose money on a bet nobody will think it odd. Yet if I spend the same amount of money on spending time with a beautiful naked woman people think that it needs explanation. I've never understood the attraction of getting drunk or betting, I prefer to spend my money on more sensible things.

---

*Since writing this I have read more about these characters. It seems that the book I had read about them (The Mistress of Mayfair by Lyndsy Spence) is not accurate. It was only gossip that said Marmaduke Furness has murdered his first wife, no formal accusations were made, although the circumstances of her death and burial were unusual. Enid Lindeman was not a heroin addict. She - Enid Cavendish as she was then - did not have sex with the entire regiment, only the officers. So that's alright then.

local girls

I have said before that most men would want a sex worker who is young, tall, slender and pretty. I have found a couple of those locally in the last couple of months. Eva is Spanish and works at Overpool Angels in Overpool. Lily is English and works at The Office in Ellesmere Port. Both are a short walk from the Merseyrail stations, just one stop apart. I have seen Eva three times and Lily four times. Both have let me use my ultra thin condoms.

The combination of viagra and ultra thin condoms means that I can get and keep an erection easily and orgasm. I gave Eva £45 each time and Lily £50. I could have paid just £40 to see Lily but I gave her an extra £10 for oral sex without a condom. That's for half an hour. Much better value than Blackpool and about the same as Manchester.

I went to an older woman's house in Chester (Jackie) after I saw her ad in a local paper. She was nice and I was sure I would see her again but that was before I met Eva and Lily.

I saw Lily again on Tuesday this week. I had to wait to see her so I sat with the older woman, who I fancy. She had an American drama on the TV and she was also playing a game on her tablet. She asked me to help with the general knowledge. I tried flirting with her, reminding her of what we did together, but she made it clear that she didn't 'work the room' anymore. There were several phone calls and a man came to the door.

Lily is getting a bit picky now that she's becoming popular. She doesn't really like men coming inside her, she prefers it if they come on her tits. She let me use one of my condoms to begin with but then said could we change to a regular one. Then she said she wanted me to come on her tits. We tried, but it didn't work.

I left without having had an orgasm but I went one stop along to Overpool Angels. A woman opened the door. Eva wasn't there. I told her I wasn't going to hand over my money until I saw the sex worker, so that I could see if I fancied her. I sat on a corner of the bed and in walked another woman who I recognised as the 'maid' from previous visits. She's older, but I really fancied her.

It's funny that in February this year I went to Sheridans in Salford for the first time. I walked out because they tried to give me a much older woman. Most men who were expecting to see a young, tall, slender and pretty girl in her 20s like Eva would have walked out - if they hadn't paid already. I thought I would have a nice time with this older woman and I was right. I said I would have her if she let me use one of my ultra thin condoms like Eva does. She said fine, a condom's a condom.

She said her name's Amber. I think she's mixed race, she said she's naturally brown. She's quite small, with a small pretty face. I enjoyed shagging her, even more that Eva, and to judge from the look on her face she enjoyed it too. I orgasmed inside her. Afterwards she told me she had to fill in for Eva at short notice. Eva had remembered she had an appointment. I learned several interesting things from Amber talking to her afterwards.

She told me the reason why I had never been offered the bigger room with the four-poster bed when I'd come to see Eva. They keep it for other clients, but I won't go into the details. I asked her about young Italian Roberta, who I had shagged on the four-poster in June. Amber said that they had gone together on holiday to Mexico but Roberta didn't want to continue sex work.

Roberta told Amber that she was annoyed that none of the men came to see her again. She had been expecting that she would have regular clients, who would see her and no one else. That didn't happen, even though she gave them more than the minimum. I had hoped to see Roberta again but she wasn't there, so I saw Eva.

I guess my favourite age for a sex worker is about 40. I'm happy to go younger or older if I find them attractive. I can find a woman attractive even when she's not conventionally attractive. A smile or a laugh can be as important as a pretty face.

I'm giving up paying for sex for this winter. It's not as much fun in winter. I might start again in the spring. I'm trying to restrict my spending for a while. When my finances improve, I'm sure that I will continue: I can't think of any better way of spending £50 than having half an hour with an attractive woman.

You have to go round to the back of this row of shops. Look for the open gate with the number 30A. Go up the stairs to heaven with the angels. The two windows lit up above Bespoke Care Cheshire Ltd is where the room with the four poster bed is.

Nordic model in Northern Ireland

The Nordic model has been in place in Northern Ireland since 2015. This is supposed to criminalise men who pay for sex. Now there is a study which shows how effective it has been in reducing demand. The data shows that there has been an increase. "On the contrary, we found that the supply of commercial sexual services appears to have actually increased in the period following the implementation of the legislation." page 164

The study is called A Review of the Criminalisation of Paying for Sexual Services in Northern Ireland by Graham Ellison, Caoimhe Ní Dhónaill & Erin Early and it came out in September of this year. It shows that the Nordic model has not worked in Northern Ireland, neither has it worked in Sweden.

Other important statements from Chapter 10: Conclusions are

• none of the foundational claims of the Nordic model can be supported
• it is difficult to argue that Article 64A has had any noticeable effect on deterring sex workers from working or limiting their availability in the jurisdiction.   
• sex-purchase legislation is not particularly effective at reducing either the supply or demand for prostitution
• there have been few arrests, prosecutions and convictions under Article 64A and the two convictions that have ensued have had nothing to do with either human trafficking for sexual exploitation or prostitution
• an increase in anti-social, nuisance and abusive behaviours directed to sex workers
• purchase legislation in Northern Ireland has not significantly altered client behaviour
• the evidence base from Sweden and the Nordic countries generally is simply not strong enough to support the proposition that sex purchase legislation has led to the massive decreases in prostitution and human trafficking that are alleged to have occurred in those jurisdictions
• Article 64A has had minimal to no effect on the demand for prostitution, the number of active sex workers in the jurisdiction and on levels of human trafficking for sexual exploitation

I have copied-and-pasted the final paragraph of the conclusion at the end of this post.

Some people will say that I don't want the Nordic model to come to Britain because I fear conviction. There have been only two convictions so far, but neither of them were men who paid for sex. Both men were said to have offered payment for sex to females who weren't prostitutes. You have to wonder what is wrong with them. Were they just trying to be offensive? Were they drunk? Did they have a psychological problem or a learning disability? I don't proposition women in the street.

There are a couple of things that I found disappointing in this report.

Firstly, I would have liked to have seen data on who is prosecuted for brothel keeping. Are they mostly male or female? Are they young or old? I think that it will be mostly young women, this seems to be the case in the Irish Republic. I suppose the study is about demand, but the Nordic model is supposed to reduce demand and stop the criminalisation of prostitutes.

"The sex worker has to fear being recorded as a prostitute in police records, possibly being prosecuted for brothel keeping, losing her accommodation, stuff around immigration and so on. Remember even EU workers can be refused entry at airport/port once they are recorded as a prostitute by police." page 154

So no man has been convicted of paying for sex. Yet women are convicted of brothel keeping, evicted and deported. So much for 'shifting the burden'. That's the Nordic model for you. They say prostitution is violence against women but they do that to women. What bastards.

Secondly, the study doesn't point out that surveys in Sweden show an increase in active sex buyers after their 1999 law, from 1.3% in 1996 to 1.8% in 2008. It really does seem that the Nordic model increases demand, and if there is a decrease later it is because of other factors, such as the 2008 financial crisis.

"It may be disappointing for proponents of this legislation that the research did not uncover more evidence of a reduction in prostitution in Northern Ireland, particularly since this was hailed as such a success in Sweden, and one of the main reasons why the Nordic model (so termed) has been exported internationally.  However, we would respond by suggesting that the evidence base from Sweden and the Nordic countries generally is simply not strong enough to support the proposition that sex purchase legislation has led to the massive decreases in prostitution and human trafficking that are alleged to have occurred in those jurisdictions.  We noted in the Introduction that we are not aware of any prevalence studies from the Nordic regions relating to before and after the legislation was introduced, nor are we aware of any trend analyses of administrator data from ASWs that operate in these regions which would provide a clearer indication of prevalence rates. Certainly, the evidence from Northern Ireland based on a comparison of the before and after data suggests very strongly that Article 64A has had minimal to no effect on the demand for prostitution, the number of active sex workers in the jurisdiction and on levels of human trafficking for sexual exploitation."

A new law in Northern Ireland criminalises sex work – and endangers sex workers

in the news

A few posts ago I wrote about the arrests of women in Nordic model Ireland. Now there is proof that the Nordic model harms women but has little effect on pimps or punters. This is from The Irish News.

New research by UglyMugs, a sex worker advocacy service, taken from CSO statistics and media reporting of brothel keeping since 2009, found that young migrant women are the people most likely to be convicted of the offence.
The results show that the vast majority (85%) of those convicted of brothel keeping are female and most are aged 18-24 (30%) or 25-44 (59%).
All of the sex workers convicted appear to have been non-nationals, and in 22 of 82 of the cases (27%) it was stated that one or more of the sex workers being prosecuted was a mother.
In various cases it was also highlighted that a sex worker was supporting other family members.
In 79 of the 82 cases (96%) it appears the sex worker(s) pleaded guilty, which has stoked concern that sex workers are not availing of their right to have a solicitor present when being questioned. In two of the cases it was found the sex workers did not even have any legal representation in court.
In 42 (51%) of the 82 cases examined the sex worker(s) voluntarily pledged to leave the jurisdiction, or the judge ordered them to do so.
A total of 148 of the 165 individuals (90%) in the cases were named in the media.

So I was correct in my suspicion that most people who are criminalised under the Nordic model are young women. They are not only imprisoned but also deported. The prohibitionists are telling lies when they say they believe that prostitutes should be decriminalised. These young women have had their lives ruined by conviction, deportation and being named in the media.

These figures are from 2009 onwards whereas the Nordic model started in 2017 in Ireland. However, nothing has changed since 2017 in Ireland in terms of women getting arrested except that the penalties for brothel keeping were doubled. So these figures present a picture of what is happening in Ireland today. We know about women who have been convicted since 2017.

They should do a gender impact assessment for the 2017 Criminal Law Sexual Offences Act. It seems many women have been jailed or fined, mostly young women. One man has been fined for paying for sex. There will have been a few men who have been convicted of pimping. I know that it's no excuse to not know the law, but this is the first law where the state has lied about what is legal. People have been told that in Ireland prostitutes have been decriminalised. It's so unfair: they should release all the young women now.

Gunilla Ekberg, a prominent supporter of the Nordic model, said 'if you criminalise women your are in a situation where victims are penalised. It is in violation of international law'. She doesn't understand that prostitutes get arrested in Sweden just as she doesn't understand that the studies she praises showed an increase in active sex buyers after the law was introduced. 'In mid-November 2008 when a new research study was published, the number of purchasers or buyers was down to 8%. This is a good and trust worthy study -- solid, strong, and empirical.' It was a good study - but it showed an increase in 'purchasers or buyers' (active sex buyers) from 1.3% to 1.8%.

A survivor of the Magdalene laundries has been awarded an undisclosed five-figure settlement after she was forced to work unpaid for almost six years. This laundry was run by the Good Shepherd Sisters. They now help to run Ruhama, who campaigned to get the 2017 Criminal Law Sexual Offences Act which is causing all the problems. Why did the Irish state give them so much power then and now?

Also in the newspapers recently is the latest attempt to bring this cruel and hypocritical system to Britain. The Conservative Party Human Rights Commission has brought out a report The Limits of Consent. The chair of this commission is Fiona Bruce MP and she has announced her intention in Parliament to submit a bill to “end demand for prostitution”. Fiona Bruce is an Evangelical Alliance council member and sits on the All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group. She has voted against allowing same sex couples to marry.

Dozens of academics and experts have criticised the report and issued an open letter. In Bruce's report it states: "Sweden established a ‘neoabolitionist’ approach in 1999 in which the provision of sexual services was decriminalised while the purchase was criminalised". So the young women who have been convicted and deported have been decriminalised? I don't think so.

Let me give you a taste of the sort of thing the report says:-

Surveys in Sweden show a reduction in the number of men reporting that they had ever purchased sexual services from 13.6% in 1996 (before the law against purchase was introduced in 1999), to 8% in 2008 and 7.5% in 2014. Several submissions reported that the industry did not shrink with the law change but moved online and indoors. However, a 2010 report by the Swedish Chancellor of Justice concluded that the number of persons in prostitution had halved overall and not just been displaced into off-street locations.

They are hiding the fact that the same surveys showed an increase is active sex buyers from 1.3% in 1996 to 1.8% in 2008. Hiding the fact that the number of men reporting that they had ever purchased sexual services increased from 8% in 2008 to over 10% in 2011, and that Swedish criminologists have said that the 13.6% to 8% drop is statistically impossible. All the other metrics of demand that increased: number of people selling sex, number of women selling sex, number of schoolgirls and young women selling sex.

Like so many of the prohibitionists they use the prevalence rate instead of the incidence rate that they should be using. The prevalence rate is a drop from 13.6% to 8% between 1996 and 2008. The incidence rate is an increase from 1.3% to 1.8% in the same years. I have dealt with this issue in detail here.

The 2010 report they refer to is the Skarhed report which does NOT say that the number of persons in prostitution has halved and does not prove that they had not been displaced. It said that there has been an apparent reduction in street prostitution by half. Not prostitution in general. Street prostitutes have always been a small fraction of prostitutes in general. The report says that as far as it can tell there has been no increase in prostitution in Sweden: it does not claim a reduction.

The Skarhed report does not say they know that street prostitutes have not started working indoors. What it does say is "Nor is there any information that suggests that prostitutes formerly exploited on the streets are now involved in indoor prostitution". So they just don't know. It does say though that there has been an increase in internet contacts and advertisements in magazines.

If the Skarhed report had said "Nor is there any hard data that proves that prostitutes formerly exploited on the streets are now involved in indoor prostitution" that would have been true. But there is plenty of information that suggests that they are.

I have written a lot more about this report in this page here.

Another thing in the news that irritated me is an article that states: “Studies show anywhere from 50 to 90 per cent of women who end up in the sex industry were sexually abused as children”. This is false. It does seem that between 50 and 90 percent of children who were victims of child sex trafficking had been involved with child welfare services.

The article was “Forgotten Women: How girls get swept into the sex industry – and how they can get out of it” by Lucy Anna Gray in The Independent. It seems that the Nordic model can only exist because of lies. There are two sides to this argument, but only one side relies on false statistics.