Foreign News: Call Them Social Workers

"I will not rest," cried Marthe Richard in 1945, "until Paris is cleansed of these stinking sewers." In the reform wave sweeping postwar France, Parisians agreed with Mme. Richard, the only woman on the city council, about their 178 legalized houses of prostitution and the 7,000 registered whores. Brothel-keepers, a $20-million-a-year industry at stake, pleaded that red-haired Mme. Richard, who won the Legion of Honor as a spy for France in World War I, was a neurotic and a publicity-seeker. They also tried to bribe her. Mme. Richard carried the day: the brothels were closed.

But sin only went outdoors and underground....

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