London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

by Henry Mayhew

But while the woman who lost herself was forgiven by the civil and religious law, no toleration was extended to the wretch who made her such—the pander who seduced young girls and sold them for profit. The Council of Elvira refused pardon, even on his deathbed, to the wretch who was guilty of leading the innocent to prostitution. “Miserable wretch; brand of hell!” exclaimed Merot to one of these, “dost thou believe that when thy accursed soul is lost in eternal pains, God will be content? No; he will augment thy punishment;” and he added, that the young females he had ruined should inflict his tortures. All the rigour of the law, every form of public infamy, every device of humiliation, was called in to brand with additional opprobrium the depraved trader in prostitution.

In France the punishment was in general arbitrary, according to the circumstances of each case. Nevertheless law and usage regulated the degree of it. In Paris an edict was published in 1367 forbidding persons to procure girls for prostitution on pain of being exposed in the pillory, marked with a hot iron, and expelled from the city. It was renewed in 1415, and we find an instance of its application in the next year, for in the public accounts Cassin La Botte is described as receiving money for the expenses of an execution of this kind, in which some wretches were led into a public place, branded, mutilated by the ears, and set in the pillory. Sometimes the procuress was mounted on an ass, with her face towards its tail, a straw hat on her head, and an inscription on her back. In this state she was paraded through the streets, whipped, and sent to prison, or exiled. These circumstances appear to have frequently occurred as lately as 1756. We find it applied in a provincial town to some prostitutes who had infringed the local rules:—“They were led through the place, with a drum beating before them, and exposed.” In England similar occurrences were common, and were accompanied by some peculiar details. The cart in which the culprit sat was preceded by two men playing music, while a crowd followed and showered filth and mud upon the offenders.

Sometimes, when the penalty was aggravated in severity, the culprit’s hair was burnt. Thus, in 1399, at Paris, several men and women suffered this punishment, being pilloried and deprived of all their possessions. At Toulouse, a prostitute was conducted to the town hall, where the executioner tied her hands, stripped her naked, placed a cap, made in the form of a sugar-loaf, ornamented with feathers, on her head, hung an inscription on her back, and then took her out to a rock in the middle of the river. There she was compelled to enter an iron cage, which was plunged three times into the water, while nearly the whole population was assembled to witness the scene. Afterwards she was led to the hospital, where she remained labouring for the rest of her days. A similar custom existed at Bourdeaux. Everywhere, indeed, the same rude devices were employed to terrify the people from profligacy.

The laws of Naples were extremely severe. Before the thirteenth century we find every procuress endeavouring to corrupt innocent females punished, like an adultress, by the mutilation of her nose. The mother who prostituted her daughter suffered this punishment, until King Frederic absolved such women as trafficked with their children under the pressure of want. The same prince, however, decreed against all who were found guilty of preparing drugs or inflammatory liquors—to aid in their designs upon virtuous females—death in case of injury resulting, and imprisonment when no serious harm was effected. These laws, however, proved insufficient for their purpose, and towards the end of the fifteenth century profligacy ran riot in Naples. Ruffiani multiplied in its streets, procuring by force or by corruption multitudes of victims to fill the taverns and brothels of the city. Penalties of extreme severity were proclaimed against them. The Ruffiani were ordered to quit the kingdom, and the prostitutes were prohibited from harbouring such persons among them. Any woman who disobeyed was condemned to be burnt on the forehead with a hot iron, whipped in the most humiliating manner, and exiled.

The code of Alphonso IX., King of Castile, which belonged to the second half of the twelfth century, included procurers among infamous persons, which condemned them to “civil death.” Five classes of these were enumerated:—I. Men who trafficked in debauch: these were expelled the country. II. Speculators who hired their houses to abandoned women for the exercise of their vocation: their houses were confiscated, and they were fined. III. Men or women who kept brothels and hired out prostitutes: if the females they sold were slaves, the law gave them liberty; if they were free, their corrupter was under pain of death, forced to endow and place them in a situation to marry. IV. Death was denounced against the husband who connived at the dishonour of his wife, and against every one who seduced an honest woman to infamy. V. Girls who supported Ruffiani were publicly whipped, and deprived of the clothes they wore when arrested. The men themselves were, for the first offence, flogged; for the second, expelled from the city; and for the third, sent to the galleys. Between 1552 and 1566 additional terrors were devised against this crime, and the Ruffiani once convicted were sentenced to ten years chained at the oar, while for a repetition of the offence they received two hundred blows, and were condemned for life to the galleys.

The incitement to vice has, indeed, been everywhere considered a crime deserving of the heaviest punishment; but prostitution itself has not been tolerated without interference. In France, especially, efforts were early made for its suppression. The laws, however, failed, on account of the number of offenders it would have been necessary to condemn, and a few examples only were made, to show that no licence was extended to debauch. The first edict published was an absolute prohibition by Charlemagne. He commanded strict search to be made throughout his dominions, in every habitation and place of resort, that every public woman, and all persons without known occupations or means of livelihood, might be exposed. Men who were found harbouring prostitutes were compelled to carry them on their shoulders to the place where they were to be whipped with rods. In case of refusal they suffered this infliction themselves. It is singular to find, that among the ancient Parisians no disgrace was equal to that of bearing on the back a debauched woman.

During three centuries and a half after Charlemagne, public immorality flowed in a tide over the country. Prostitutes multiplied in every town, and in the eleventh century Paris was as one general brothel. Everywhere harlots thronged the streets, soliciting the men who passed, dragging them by the arms into their dens, and if they resisted, abusing them in unmeasured terms. In the same house might be found a school on the upper floor and a brothel below. In 1254 an effort was made for the reformation of manners; but the only effect was, that vice dissimulated instead of bearing its title on its face. Clandestine succeeded to public debauch. At length, however, some real good resulted from a succession of rigorous edicts. At the commencement of the fifteenth century, the scourge of society had been lightened, but there broke out wars and troubles which gave new licence to immorality. A hundred years revived the pestilence in all its virulent shapes; and in 1503 a council was assembled at Paris to deliberate on the best means of abolishing the brothels which were crowded around them. Laws were passed, which we cannot describe in detail, especially as they are of no value to the legislators of this age, for in spite of them the moral malady of France extended, and public custom recognised what authority refused to allow.

In Paris the prostitutes resorted to places known as clapiers, or mole-holes, in allusion to the brutal subterranean life they led. They did not live in the houses where they received their temporary companions; there were localities common to many, where they assembled during the day, and which the magistrates ordered to be opened and closed at stated hours. They were not permitted to carry on their orgies at night, to prostitute themselves in their own homes, or publicly to shock the decent population; but they rebelled against all discipline, and evaded where they did not openly contradict the law. In 1307 an edict was published, assigning to prostitutes certain streets as places of abode—Rue de l’Abreuvorix Macon, la Boucherie, la Rue Froidmantel, de Glatigny, la Cour Robert de Paris, les rues Baillohé, Tyron, Charon, and Champ Fleury. It is remarkable that the infamy of these neighbourhoods has been hereditary; for after the lapse of 500 years, after all the alterations in the city of Paris which have been effected, after all the vicissitudes of its domestic history, the same places still exhibit the same spectacles, and are inhabited by the same population. The complaint of two neighbours was enough to cause a prosecution against the keeper of a brothel. Notwithstanding every exertion which the inefficient law and police of those ages enabled rulers to make, prostitution increased, spread into prohibited streets, and throughout France was a characteristic feature of society. Nor were the palaces whence issued decrees for the reformation of public manners, superior in many instances to the brothels they denounced.

In the eleventh century a brothel and a church stood side by side at Rome; and 500 years after, under the pontificate of Paul II., prostitutes were numerous. Numerous statutes were enacted, and many precautions taken, which prove the grossness of manners at that epoch. One convicted of selling a girl to infamy was heavily fined, and if he did not pay within ten days had one foot cut off. The nobility and common people indulged habitually in all kinds of excess. Tortures, flogging, branding, banishment, were inflicted in vain on some to terrify the others, but with very incomplete success. To carry off and detain a prostitute against her will was punishable by amputation of the right hand, imprisonment, flogging, or exile. The rich, however, invariably bought immunity for themselves. In Spain, although violence offered to a public woman was an offence, few women dared to complain of having been seduced. In Naples, also, under King Roger, such a charge was never taken; but William, the successor of that prince, punished with death the crime of rape; but the victim must prove that she shrieked aloud, and prefer her complaint within eight days, or show that she was detained by force. When once a woman had prostituted herself, however, she had no right to refuse to yield her person to any one. This legislation extended to the extreme north, and obtained in Sleswig.

Among the most extraordinary acts of legislation on this subject was the bull of Clement II., who desired to endow the church with the surplus gains of the brothel. Every person guilty of prostitution was forced, when disposing of her property, either at death or during life, to assign half of it to a convent. This regulation was easily eluded and utterly inefficacious. A tribunal was also established, having jurisdiction over brothels, upon which a tax was laid continuing in existence until the middle of the sixteenth century. Efforts were made to confine this class of dwellings to a particular quarter, but without success. In Naples the same failure attended the attempt. Prostitutes, in spite of the law, established themselves in the most beautiful streets of the city, in palatial buildings, and there, with incessant clamour, congregated a horde of thieves, profligates, and vagabonds of every kind, until the chief quarter became uninhabitable. In 1577 they were ordered to quit the street of Catalana within eight days, under pain of the scourge for the women, and the galleys for such of the proprietors as were commoners, while simple banishment was threatened against “nobles.”