PROSTITUTION

PROSTITUTION. Between 1450 and 1789, prostitution underwent dramatic changes in organization and policing. Criminalization replaced medieval toleration; a genuine police force appeared in the seventeenth century; and a new attitude toward sex emerged in the late eighteenth century, which pathologized the prostitute and associated her with disease and the urban proletariat.

In the late Middle Ages, prostitution was tolerated. Urban elites in France, Spain, and Germany established municipally owned brothels that were meant to preserve the honor of honest women by satisfying the sexual appetites of the city youth. In the sixteenth century an abrupt change occurred: The municipal houses were closed in Augsburg (1532), Basel (1534), Frankfurt (1560), Seville (1620), and throughout France (1500–1525). The appearance of syphilis (1494) in Europe certainly contributed to this change in attitude. But other forces must have determined it, for between thirty and fifty years elapsed between the arrival of syphilis and the closings of the brothels. Larger, professional armies, the growth of social distinctions, and the Protestant and Catholic Reformations probably led to the demise of toleration. More soldiers made the municipal brothels dangerous, and the strict morality advocated by pastors and priests made whoring shameful. Protestants, like Martin Luther (1483–1546), condemned prostitutes, as did reforming Catholics like Pope Pius V. At the same time, the growth of social distinctions and the spread of better manners caused elite men to seek more refined and exclusive prostitutes or courtesans.

The term "courtesan" originated in the late 1400s at the papal court in Rome, where celibate clerks sought refined female company. In the sixteenth century, Italy had the most accomplished and celebrated courtesans. Venice was famous for its courtesans, and many visiting dignitaries, like the French king Henry III (ruled 1574–1589), sought an evening with one of these beauties. Some courtesans, like the Venetian Veronica Franco (1546–1591) and the Roman Tullia d'Aragona (1510–1556), frequented men of letters and published poetry in their own right. Others were simply decorative, but all promised a more intimate and socially superior experience to the new elites of Europe.

Paradoxically, at the same time that the courtesan appeared, prostitution was criminalized throughout western Europe. In France, the Orléans ordinance of 1560 made soliciting in Paris a crime. In Rome, Pius V (reigned 1566–1572) repeatedly banished prostitutes. In Spain, Philip IV (ruled 1621–1643) decreed prostitution illegal in 1624. But these new laws had little effect. Early modern monarchs had neither the means nor the desire to hunt down prostitutes. Consequently, prostitution flourished in early modern Europe.

Every European army had a host of camp followers, and each city unofficial "hot" streets where prostitutes plied their trade. The tavern was the most common site of prostitution, but soliciting also occurred on bridges, like the Pont-Neuf in Paris, in markets (like London's Covent Garden), and near theaters and opera houses. Both men and women ran brothels, but procuresses were probably more common than pimps. Prostitutes were generally native girls, born within the city walls, between the ages of sixteen and twenty-nine. Some family disruption—the death of a mother or the remarriage of a father—often preceded a girl's drift into prostitution, but the passage of an army was also a major factor. Many women's occupations—linen mender, washerwoman, and street vendor—served as a "cover" for prostitution, and some occupations, like orange sellers in London theaters or bouquet vendors in Paris, were practically synonymous with prostitution. How many prostitutes lived in most early modern cities? It is impossible to say because no police force existed to count or monitor prostitutes.

In 1670, the king of France appointed the first Parisian police chief and gave him broad powers. Small at first, the Parisian police force grew, and by 1700 it was sufficiently large to have an impact on prostitution. Brigades of mounted policemen crisscrossed the city arresting as many as eight hundred women a year. With the Watch Acts of 1751, London too acquired roving watchmen who bound over for trial as many as fifty prostitutes in a night. The most visible form of prostitution, streetwalking, was the target, but the police also monitored brothels and taverns.

The years between 1680 and 1740 were a period of intense repression in cities like Amsterdam and Paris. Prevailing attitudes toward prostitutes remained highly negative: Hogarth's six prints entitled The Harlot's Progress (1732) shows the rise of Moll Hackabout, a girl on the town, who is imprisoned and then dies a lonely death of syphilis. The Abbé Antoine-François Prévost d'Exiles's novel Manon Lescaut (1731) painted an equally bleak picture of a prostitute's imprisonment and decline, but Manon differed from Moll in that she was the object of the hero's love. Especially after Jean-Jacques Rousseau's novel Julie; or, the New Héloise (1761), Europeans came to view romantic love and sexuality as the very core of the personality, the greatest self-fulfillment. These new attitudes worked against prostitutes, who now appeared to be selling something much more precious than a few moments' pleasure.

While the old religious strictures against prostitution waned, new objections to venal sex emerged. A few authors, including Bernard de Mandeville and Restif de la Bretonne, argued for the legalization and regulation of prostitution, but most thinkers worried about its health consequences. Syphilis and prostitutes were increasingly equated, and physicians began to shape public policy. In 1803, the first dispensary—run by the Paris police—opened in Paris. Here, prostitutes had to register and endure compulsory pelvic examinations. The dispensary evolved into an elaborate and invasive regulatory system that allowed the police to monitor working-class women and incarcerate those, the "rebels," who refused to be registered. In England, the authorities imported the Contagious Diseases Acts (1864, 1866, and 1869) from the colonies, subjecting working-class women in army garrisons and port cities to unprecedented surveillance and punishment. Similar sanitary measures appeared in Italy, Germany, and Russia. Prostitution was now regarded as "the" social evil, and prostitutes were subjected to arbitrary arrest and incarceration. By comparison, the episodic and unsystematic persecution of prostitutes in the early modern period looked benign.

PROSTITUTION

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