Kai „tos moterys“ pasitraukė iš „Nuodėmių gatvės“... Lakoniškas post scriptum J. K. Belecko bestseleriui
When Those Women Left The Street of Sins … A Laconic post scriptum to J. K. Beleckas’ Bestseller

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to contribute to the data about prostitution in Lithuania provided in the book The Street of Sins (published in 1930) by a well-known journalist J. K. Beleckas, which quickly became a bestseller. The article is based on the information collected from the Lithuanian press of the 1930s. In his journalistic investigation, the talented author of the book has revealed the life of the “red light district” of the temporary capital (Nemunas, Gardinas, Uosto and I. Kantas Streets) and the dramatic destinies of the women who traded their bodies in 1919–1929 in an intriguing and at the same time didactic way. The present article focuses on a later period which can be subdivided into two parts. The first one comprises the year 1930–1935 when the police ordered the prostitutes to leave the abovementioned district; however, they had a possibility to continue their business legally in other places in Kaunas. The second part is the period of 1935–1940, when prostitution was banned in the Republic of Lithuania, and the prostitutes masked their activities by pretending to be waitresses in cafes, housemaids, etc. The data show that illegal intimate services were developed very much in Kaunas, and the police had difficulty fighting with them. In the press, prostitution is unambiguously viewed as a phenomenon particularly harmful to the morality and health of the society.

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