London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 4

by Henry Mayhew

In Spain, where concubinage was legally recognised, men of rank were forbidden to take as concubines slaves, whether born in actual bondage or emancipated, dancers, servants of taverns, go-betweens, or prostitutes. It was disputed whether the children of these women could be legitimatized by subsequent marriage. It was decided that they could, though with more difficulty than others, and their mothers became amenable to the laws against adultery.

Persecution in all barbarous ages and countries has endeavoured to perform the task of teaching and reclaiming mankind. The members of the venal sisterhood have, more than any others, experienced the harsh effects of this species of legislation. The law sought to withdraw them from vice by shutting from them every approach to virtue, to reform their minds by forbidding them the society of honest persons, to elevate them from their degradation by adding to their infamy. It refused to receive them as witnesses, even when violence was done upon their persons; though more liberal jurists cried out amid the clamour of intolerant bigotry, that the protection of justice should attend even the vilest prostitutes in the vilest dens of her resort; but the spirit of the times was vindictive, and because society was corrupt and base, it was most unsparing in its cruelty towards the victims of debasement and corruption.

In spite of every one of these rude devices of a rude society to banish immorality to habitations of its own, by badges, quarters, distinct costumes, and even separate laws, prostitutes swarmed in every city of Europe, and still more in its innumerable camps. Armies were then undisciplined bands of adventurers, and pillage was the soldier’s chief purpose. Xenophon tells that the nations of Persia, Asia Minor, and India, were accompanied on their marches by their women and their children, to defend whom they fought with more courage; and Athenæus describes Chareas, causing a band of beautiful courtezans to dance before his phalanxes to the tune of flutes and psalteries. Two thousand prostitutes were driven from the camp of Scipio Africanus; and so, in the middle ages, every army drew in its train numbers of public women. Three hundred were with the army which laid siege to St. Jean d’Acre in 1189, and during the whole of the crusades the Christian armies were followed by them. Many times the leaders endeavoured to check this debauchery. Some of the girls were flogged. Sometimes the man who was found with one of them was obliged to allow her to strip him to his shirt, and lead him with a rope through the camp. On the plains of Perretola, after the defeat of the Florentines, in 1325, public dances were executed by prostitutes for the amusement of the army. In all parts of Europe similar profligacy distinguished the camp; and long after we find Jeanne d’Arc, when reviewing the army, chastised with her sword several prostitutes whom she detected among the ranks. Marshal Strozzi, with a ferocity worthy of that period, drowned 800 of them in the Loire. When the Duke of Alva invaded Flanders, there accompanied his army “400 courtezans on horseback, beautiful and grand as princesses, and 800 others on foot.” These were for the pleasure of 10,000 men, all veterans.

Prostitution was authorized and disciplined, not only in the camps but in the palaces of those days. From the eleventh century to that of Francis I., a regular community of public women was attached to the court.

We have already noticed the Queen of Louis VII. kissing one of them on her way to church; and we find Charlemagne ordering his palace to be cleared of them. At the Council of Nantes, in 660, it was complained that the concubines of the nobility, instead of remaining at home, thronged to public assemblies; but the seraglios of these lords, in the ninth century, were places of prostitution. The German law imposed a fine of six sous on a man who committed violence on a female in the principal or royal “gynecées,” but only three in any other. It was formerly the custom to send to one of these retreats a woman convicted of adultery; but this was at length forbidden, lest it should simply allow her an opportunity to repeat the offence. Sometimes they were only the harems of the proprietor, sometimes brothels. William IX., of Poitou, established in the eleventh century an abbey for prostitutes, where he added to his profligacy the crime of sacrilege, giving the harlots the titles of abbess and prioress, and parodying every sacred rite. The orgies of his palace, and indeed of all others of that age, are indescribable.

The title of King of the Prostitutes was given to the officer who presided over the royal brothels. In Paris, in Normandy, and in Burgundy, we find this functionary. Under the kings of France he enjoyed a high rank and many privileges; and associated with him was a woman who governed the prostitutes, and punished them with whipping when they offended. In England, also, the palace and the mansions of the nobles contained small brothels. In Henry VIII.’s palace was a room, with an inscription over the door, “Chamber of the King’s Prostitutes.”

Thus, throughout the world, there was, in the middle ages, profligacy and corruption, which rose to its height at the period which preceded the Reformation. From their chief places of resort in royal palaces prostitutes spread over the whole of society, invading the church, the hearth, following the camp, dividing the privileges of the wife, and ever debauching both sexes by their companionship. Rods, prisons, gallows, chains, pillories, tortures, served in no way to prevent or even to discourage them; badges and restrictions proved equally futile; but it is agreeable to find some relief to this dark spectacle of demoralization. In the age of primitive Christianity religious men endeavoured to reclaim from vice those whom they found making a trade of it. We cannot stay to dwell on the sincere apostleship which laboured, especially in the East, and was followed by fathers and hermits from the desert. Stories of conversions of this kind fill the legends of the time, and earnest attempts were made to offer an asylum to the unhappy women who had abandoned themselves to profligacy. We have noticed Theodora, the imperial harlot of Rome, collecting 500 prostitutes in a palace on the Bosphorus; but her impure hand could not perform well the offices of charity, and she applied force to fill her asylum. Many of the girls, therefore, who were shut up in her magnificent and luxurious prison, found their confinement insupportable, and committed suicide to escape it. In 1198 two Parisian priests established a nunnery for repentant women, and thirty years afterwards the House of the “Daughters of God” was instituted, and these efforts were rewarded with much genuine success. Two centuries passed without many enterprises of the sort being undertaken; but in the fifteenth century an association of public women was formed to exchange their base gains for those of piety and virtue.

In 1489 all the prostitutes of Amiens, animated by a sudden awaking of remorse, applied for a place of retreat, where they might bury their shame, and renew their honesty. This was granted, and several others were established, the inmates of which wore white garments.

In several other parts of France, and generally in Europe, the religious orders made attempts to recall some of the abandoned class of females, to redeem the virtue of their sex, and, as they laboured with sincerity, many of their enterprises were successful. But, on the whole, prostitution still increased, and, the Reformation broke over a state of society demoralized to the very core[90].