Chief Constable Roderick Ross’ 1927 statement highlights the ambiguities surrounding both the policing of prostitution and attitudes towards the role of prostitution in Scotland during the early twentieth century. On the one hand, Ross’ proposal that ‘our prostitutes’ should not be ‘driven off the streets’ suggests that he was against criminalising street prostitution because it performed a necessary role in society. On the other hand, he clearly saw the women who were involved in prostitution as being unrespectable and less important than other women. Nonetheless, his use of the possessive pronoun ‘our’ suggests that he did not necessarily see them as outcasts from society entirely.

It was not only police officers who held apparently contradictory attitudes towards prostitution. Then, as today, the British public were equally divided in their opinions regarding prostitution and what should be done about it. Whilst some wanted to abolish prostitution because of its harmful influence on women and society, others saw prostitution as a necessary evil required to placate men's natural sexual desires. Likewise, many practically minded observers were also concerned about controlling the disease and public disorder that might result from unregulated prostitution. The figure of ‘the prostitute’, therefore, was used as a symbol for wider concerns within society and appropriated for different causes. On the one hand, she was held up as a figure of pity by the reformers who wanted to ‘save her’ and the feminists who used her plight to rally against the double sexual standard and problematise women's unequal position in society. On the other hand, she was portrayed as a dangerous source of contagion and social disorder by the army, police and medical profession who wanted to inspect, sanitise and control her. These varying opinions and attitudes had a tangible impact on the regulation of prostitution during this period and, consequently, on the lives of the women who sold sex. The ways in which laws and policing policies were implemented had the potential to influence how and where these women could work, and the actions of religious voluntary organisations shaped the ways in which ‘fallen women’ were given access to welfare and alternative employment Opportunities.