Prostitution and Moral Failings
Prostitutes And Gambling
McCallum was a worldly pleasure seeker, in addition to being an compulsive recorder keeper. This combination leaves behind a record of the cost of vices from the past. He kept a running total of his gambling wins & losses from his regular card games and his occasional horse racing betting.
More remarkable was the matter-of-fact way he records the cost of prostitutes. Included among other everyday expenses like hat and haircut, are the prices he paid for the Danish, Nigger and Russian girls he visited.
Sample Transactions
1892 – Pony Races blew 20/-
1894 – Prostitutes very good time for 7/6
1899 – Playing poker won 8/9
1899 – Boxing day races, spent 10/-, had 3 wins
1900 – Epsom Horse races £1.10.0
1900 – Danish woman £1.0.0 3/0
1900 – Played Hearts in the Smoking room & lost 2/7d
1900 – Nigger girl 8/0
1900 – Dutch girl 4/0
1900 – Black girl 9/0
1900 – China woman 3/0
1900 – Russian woman 3/0
1902 – Monty’s & lost 12/- at poker
1902 – Fred’s to play poker. Lost 8/9p, Lent Fred owed me 9/-.
1906 – Game of Solo, had bad luck, lost 17/-.
1907 – Went to races, had poor day, lost 31/7p
1908 – Cards, Everybody lost except George,& he won as usual 21/6p
1909 – Cards, lost 7/1p. Had a great recovery
1910 – Good game & record win, 24/7p
1913 – Cards w Hetty, she owes me 2/2
1915 – Solo at Dick’s, rotten night. Lost 23/6
1919 – To races had a poor day, lost 25/-
Pleasures Of The Flesh Expenses
McCallum keeps a detailed record of his expenses including prostitutes in the back of this 1900 diary. (See below, enlarged for ease of viewing.)
His transactions can sometimes be cross-referenced between a daily journal entry and his cash account at the back of his diary. Occasionally he would go beyond simply noting a transaction had taken place and add a comment as to the overall satisfaction of the experience – a remark of “no good” is amusingly attributed to one of the girls.
