Strumpetry

However, these abandoned women had other prospects besides mere strumpetry […]

[…] how capitalism had taken young male proletarians to be slaughtered in wars for markets and how their sisters were thrust into strumpetry.

“Political itching"—a reference, perhaps, to the duchess's notorious political and sexual intriguing, and carrying the implicit suggestion that her strumpetry led to her contraction of “the itch," or venereal disease.