Off the streets
Sir: So Lord Chorley is to introduce a Bill to 'keep vice off the streets.' When, oh when, will our Puritans leave this subject alone? May I sug- gest that before we have any further legislation, the Home Secretary should instruct the Metropolitan Police on the existing state of the law?
The avowed purpose of the Street Offences Act 1959 was to implement Part III of the Wolfenden Report. That report, while recommending that the girls be cleared off the streets, disclaimed any intention to abolish prostitution and envisaged 'small advertisements in shops or local news- papers' as a legitimate means by which ex-street- walkers might carry on their profession. The streets were duly cleared, but the small advertise- ments had only a year's run before the police stepped in and ordered their total removal. A zealous officer had decided that advertising by prostitutes was 'soliciting' within the meaning of Section 1 of the Street Offences Act and, con- sequently, that shopkeepers displaying such adver- tisements were aiding and abetting that offence. This interpretation of the law was clearly con- trary to the intentions of Parliament, but since there are zealous magistrates as well as zealous police officers, prosecutions and convictions con- tinued until 1962 when a conviction by the Marylebone magistrate's court was later taken to appeal and quashed.
Recently the assault has been renewed with a different, but equally dubious, weapon. A Padding- ton shopkeeper who displayed prostitutes' cards has been convicted (by the Marylebone magistrate) of living, in part, on immoral earnings. So we have the absurd situation in which 'respectable' adver- tisers complain that they cannot advertise a 'room with services' without receiving calls from would- be fornicators, while the police warn shopkeepers that prostitutes' cards must be not only ambigu- ously worded but mixed about fifty-fifty with 'respectable' advertisements.
I understand that Lord. Chorley's Bill will be aimed not so much at the prostitute as it the prowling customer—presumably the gentleman who pauses before a shop window to read an advertisement offering 'French lessons.'
R. L. Archdale
West Winch, King's Lynn, Norfolk
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