I found the idea of who "owned" the city to be interesting. I think that the prowler and the reformer seem like obvious choices. The new attraction of large cities to people who wanted to explore the city anonymously was sure to draw crowds of new people. I think that this attraction also may have attracted the more questionable characters as well. While some people enjoyed exploring the city anonymously for fun, I'm sure that there were others who depended on their anonymity. Some people, like Jack the Ripper, were able to take advantage of the anonymity a city provided, and have "fun" in their own ways. I don't think that this would have been possible previously, as in smaller communities, everybody seems to know everybody, and someone could hardly go into a new town and start killing people w/o some townsperson noticing this new arrival.
While the prowler is definitely an interesting character in the life of the city, I found the changing role of women to be of the most interest. Formerly, women were hardly seen roaming the city, and if they were, it was for work related reasons. I found it interesting that before this time, you knew what kind of person a woman was if she was walking the street. Now, women who walk the street could be working, but they could also be an upper class woman going to shop. I'm sure this may have made it difficult for some men to distinguish between "high end" prostitutes, and the bourgois women. It may have made for some awkward situations.
(Sorry this is late, I was busy celebrating the birth of our nation and forgot to blog).
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Your point about mistaken identity is an interesting one and it certainly did occur. In fact, the efforts to repeal the Contagious Diseases Act can be seen as a part of a larger claim by women for equal access to the city. By criminalizing prostitution and seeking to control disease by regulating the women (rather than punishing their clients), the government seemed to argue that "respectable" women had no business in the streets of the city and made the assumption that any women walking the streets was a prostitute (or took the opportunity to harass and degrade women who challenge the male prerogative of ownership of the city) leading to numerous cases of "mistaken" identity.
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