Paris-trained gynaecologist Dr William Acton (1813–75), who believed that the women who became prostitutes were morally and physically disordered, untypical of the female sex as a whole. Acton stated baldly: ‘The majority of women (happily for them) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind.’ Men, on the other hand, were in his view driven by strong sexual urges that required expression.
