BOOK

Madeleine: An Autobiography (1919)

In 2013, I discovered Madeleine: An Autobiography in my campus library, scouring the shelves on behalf of a masters-level linguistics paper for which I, a creative writing student, was wholly unprepared, spotting it amid myriad human sexuality titles. The thick paperback’s cover was a deep, forest green with white and gold letterpress and a silvery old photograph of a plain but pretty young woman — all silk and fur and pearls.

I took the memoir home and devoured it. The linguistics material — though interesting, sure — sat for several days too many in an untouched desktop stack. Madeleine delivers the reader from the Midwestern countryside to downtown St. Louis and Chicago, to the “Wild West” of Montana and the Canadian plains. It is masterful nonfiction: a coming-of-age triumph tale, a romantic saga, a political statement. Chapter after chapter, Madeleine* illustrates how erotic labor is bound to every other topic that matters: power, pleasure, identity, justice…

The narrator’s paramount argument is against the conflation between consensual adult sex work and “white slavery” (now known as “sex trafficking”).** Most striking upon my first read was her demonstration of the legitimacy of professional companionship as an option for the free-thinking and business-minded woman/femme in capitalistic patriarchal society — which of course stands in direct contradiction to timeless cautionary tales warning girls of an industry that is exploitative-by-design.

Remember, aspects of the narrator’s demeanor and biases convey a time when racism, classism, sexism, xenophobia, etc. pervaded the personal worldviews of many if not most European descendants living in North America. (I believe the narrator was born in the mid-to-late 1870s.) I hope you, her potential reader, are able to endure any eye-roll or cringe-worthy moments to extract meaning and inspiration from the narrator’s independent spirit, insatiable drive, and often radical vulnerability.

Within the grace which I allow some of her unsavory prejudices are reminders of her inability to vote (1920) or sign for her own bank account (1960s) or acquire her own mortgage (1974). It is my wistful hope that, based on the book’s afterword, “Madeleine” was able to later in life shed the snobbish patina of respectability that so burdened her character with insensitivity and disdain. I have edited the text to for the 21st century reader, though you can find it in its original 1919 form here.

* “It has been necessary for me to distinguish among many so-called memoirs of prostitutes, which, like slave narratives, were frequently rewritten by abolitionists, but nevertheless contained important information on slavery. I have discounted many prostitutes’ memoirs I have read. I am using Madeleine as evidence because I believe the story has an authentic and plausible narrative…The facts of her story are congruent with other statistical or survey material of the period, and therefore have used careful judgment in selecting this document as representative of many young women’s lives as prostitutes.” (Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood, “Notes to Pages 77-83,” p. 194)

** It is not my suggestion that sex trafficking does not exist, merely that stories about it are sensationalized, and both media and policy-makers relegate everyone involved in sex work into the same category. Hysteria ensues, consensual providers are robbed of our agency, and trafficking victims become more difficult to find. In a world where sex workers fear harm at the hands of law enforcement more than they fear harm at the hands of clients, surely one can connect the dots.

Madeleine: An Autobiography (2021 Edition)Download

Introduction (1919)

Judge Ben B. Lindsey

I write this introduction to Madeleine because it is a book that may be misunderstood by many and it deserves to be read without prejudice–with an open mind. And I commend warmly the courageous frankness of the author in writing it and of the publishers in bringing it out.

I will soon begin my twentieth year on the bench of a court in a city of about three hundred thousand people. It is a good, average city–certainly no worse and I sometimes think a little better than other cities of its size. But the problems of one city are much the same as those of all cities. During this time as judge I have dealt mostly with human problems that some people look upon altogether as moral problems. For seven or eight years I tried most of the divorce cases in such a city, with a record of having divorced some five thousand people in that time. And then for many years it has become my duty to preside in those delicate affairs known to the officers as “sex cases.” At first they concerned mostly the protection of society against prostitution. Then they turned gradually to the protection of women against society.

These cases are often conducted regardless of the technicalities of law. We cease to be a court; we become, rather, a place of adjustment of human frailties and difficulties. In a word, we now deal with people and the causes of bad things. We no longer deal merely with the things. We no longer use vengeance, violence, stupidity, and ignorance as the only remedy for these things. In this experience I was forced to the conclusion that there are no good people and no bad people–only good things and bad things. It gives me a great charity and a great sympathy–not for sin, but for sinners. It teaches me that while it is difficult at times to know how to fight sin without fighting sinners, in the end it is the better policy to conquer sin and save the people. For sinners are only people. We do not fight sick children–we fight the disease. People are only children grown up.

Thus it is that I have an intense appreciation of Madeleine. It ought to be read and pondered over. It is true. The Madeleines are right in your midst.

At first they concerned mostly the protection of society against prostitution. Then they turned gradually to the protection of women against society.

Not that I may not have some criticisms and that I may not differ in some conclusions… But the author has told us the facts–as fine, as splendid, and as sordid and as human as some of them are.

In dealing with the cases of hundreds of young girls I have cried out in an agony of hopelessness at times that not one of them could rise up to throw the facts in great bloody chunks into the faces of people, a people asleep that needed to be shocked–aroused. This Madeleine has done, and I congratulate her and thank her for it. It is a great public service. She has followed all the tortuous, trying paths of a young girl gone wrong, but not “ruined” necessarily, as the conventional lie would have us believe.

BOOK

Madeleine: An Autobiography (1919)

Introduction (1919)

Judge Ben B. Lindsey

I write this introduction to Madeleine because it is a book that may be misunderstood by many and it deserves to be read without prejudice–with an open mind. And I commend warmly the courageous frankness of the author in writing it and of the publishers in bringing it out.

Thus it is that I have an intense appreciation of Madeleine. It ought to be read and pondered over. It is true. The Madeleines are right in your midst.

Not that I may not have some criticisms and that I may not differ in some conclusions… But the author has told us the facts–as fine, as splendid, and as sordid and as human as some of them are.

I agree in the main with the conclusions of Madeleine, including most of what she says about the white-slave traffic and the utter lack of real humanity in a great many of our so-called welfare workers. And most of the real social workers who are human workers will also agree with Madeleine.

If we take alone the smug and contented moral rather than the just and eternal human attitude, then, indeed, and only then, shall the “Madeleines” be numbered among the “ruined” and the “lost.”

Judge Ben B. Lindsey

Juvenile Court of Denver
September 1919

The original, unabridged 1919 version can be found here.

BOOK

Madeleine: An Autobiography (1919)

Introduction (1919)

Judge Ben B. Lindsey

I write this introduction to Madeleine because it is a book that may be misunderstood by many and it deserves to be read without prejudice–with an open mind. And I commend warmly the courageous frankness of the author in writing it and of the publishers in bringing it out.

Thus it is that I have an intense appreciation of Madeleine. It ought to be read and pondered over. It is true. The Madeleines are right in your midst.

Not that I may not have some criticisms and that I may not differ in some conclusions… But the author has told us the facts–as fine, as splendid, and as sordid and as human as some of them are.

I agree in the main with the conclusions of Madeleine, including most of what she says about the white-slave traffic and the utter lack of real humanity in a great many of our so-called welfare workers. And most of the real social workers who are human workers will also agree with Madeleine.

If we take alone the smug and contented moral rather than the just and eternal human attitude, then, indeed, and only then, shall the “Madeleines” be numbered among the “ruined” and the “lost.”

Judge Ben B. Lindsey

Juvenile Court of Denver September 1919

The original, unabridged 1919 version can be found here.

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Juvenile Court of Denver
September 1919