As England became increasingly industrialized in the nineteenth century, people began to move (or were displaced, as a result of Enclosure Acts) from their countryside homes to urban areas.  Mines, shops and factories provided much needed jobs to the middle class, including young women.  Before industrialization began to occur, the number of occupations for women was greatly limited.  They could work as house servants, teachers, governesses or shop girls and very little else.  Young women were expected to marry so as not to be a burden to their family, and if marriage was not possible, they were generally still expected to find support for themselves, as they usually would not be able to inherit property or wealth.  Industrialization and crop rotation brought on a shortage of jobs in the countryside and young single women were forced to seek jobs in cities like London and Liverpool.  In the case of thousands of young women, prostitution became their primary source of income.  Studies show that the majority of these women had been orphaned, raised in broken homes or foster care, and on average, had lost their virginity around the age of sixteen.  Many of these women considered themselves “fallen,” incapable of ever becoming sexually pure.  Prostitution was more lucrative and required less time working than factory jobs, and unlike American prostitutes, British streetwalkers were rarely under the control of brothels or pimps.  Research shows that poverty and unemployment in Victorian England was responsible for the rise in prostitution; any young, displaced woman without a family would have had a very difficult time finding work.  The jobs they could find usually involved long hours, grueling physical labor, unhealthy working conditions and little pay.  Most prostitutes worked as servants before taking to the streets but were attracted to prostitution because it gave them more personal freedom and paid better.  Prostitutes’ wages usually depended on where they were living and what kind of men they catered to.  Because most of them would not work in brothels, they were forced to adjust their prices according to the wealth of their clients.  Such fluctuations in wages could still leave prostitutes hungry, and some, but certainly not most, would use prostitution only as supplemental income.  Of course, there was an outcry in Britain against the “Great Social Evil” of prostitution but the surplus of uneducated,  impoverished “morally loose” women did not occur spontaneously.  They grew up in a world badly in need of economic, social, educational and equal rights reform.