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.”
One example of good legislation was the pragmatic law of 1470 to
protect the unfortunates against the cupidity, the extortion, and the
fraud of tavern keepers and others, who grew rich upon their infamy.
Men went into their places of entertainment with some single girls,
contracted a heavy debt, and then left their victims to pay. These were
then given the choice of a disgraceful whipping or an engagement in the
house. They often consented, and usually spent the remainder of their
lives in dependence on their creditor, without ability to liberate
themselves. By the new law masters of taverns were forbidden to give
credit to prostitutes for more than a certain sum, and this only to
supply her with food and clothing absolutely necessary. If he exceeded
this amount he had no legal means of recovering it.
The most remarkable feature in the Neapolitan legislation on this
subject was, the establishment, at an unknown but early date, of the
Court of Prostitutes. This tribunal, which sat at Naples, had its
peculiar constitution, and had jurisdiction over all cases connected
with prostitution, blasphemy, and some other infamous offences.
Towards the end of the sixteenth century it had risen to extraordinary
power and was full of abuses. It practised all kinds of exaction and
violence, every species of partiality and injustice, and even presumed
to publish edicts of its own. The judges flung into prison numbers of
young girls, whom they compelled to buy their liberty with money, and
sometimes dared to seize women who, though of lax conduct, could not
be included in the professional class. This was discovered, and led
in 1589 to a reform of the court. Its powers were strictly defined,
and its form of procedure placed under regulation, while the avenues
to corruption were narrowed. The institution itself existed for
nearly a hundred years after that period--until 1768, when a royal
edict declared the ruler’s resolution to abolish the infamous calling
altogether. Vice, however, when widely spread in a nation, does not
vanish at the breath of authority. Denounced by the law, prostitution
continued to flourish and society to feel its influence.
Passing from the south to regions with a less voluptuous climate, we
find Strasburgh as overflowing with vice as perhaps any other city in
the world. Prostitutes were in the fifteenth century so numerous there
that, though a distinct quarter was assigned for their residences, they
invaded every locality, and swarmed in the finest streets. Speculators
were accustomed to travel abroad and bring home unfortunate girls,
whom they kidnapped and reduced to a state of slavery. Officers were
appointed to visit the brothels and collect the tax imposed on them.
More than fifty-seven of these places existed in six streets only.
One contained nineteen, while other neighbourhoods were infested in
an equal degree. At the commencement of the sixteenth century, so far
were public manners demoralized that prostitutes horded in the clock
towers and aisles of the great cathedral as well as in several smaller
churches. In 1521 an ordinance appeared directing the “cathedral
girls,” who were called “swallows,” to quit the sacred places of their
retreat within fifteen days. To those who persevered in their libertine
mode of life, various residences were assigned--in the suburbs.
Strasburgh was now in the depth of demoralization; but the Reformation
soon visited the city, awakened its people from sensual pleasures to
an intellectual battle, and a speedy change was apparent. In 1536
there were only two brothels there. In 1540 public prostitution was
effectually suppressed. Ten years after it was proposed to establish a
house of legal debauch; but the attempt was resisted, though renewed in
the third and fourth year after this.
It was little matter to the prostitutes to inhabit houses especially
dedicated to their vile traffic. They cared not to wait passively at
home for visitors. Wherever men congregated for pleasure or for the
business of life, wherever there was any chance of provoking their
desires, they thronged, sometimes impelled by the love of excitement,
sometimes by the pains of hunger. They thus transformed into so many
brothels wine houses, barber’s shops, and students’ rooms, and the
perseverance of government against them was by no means equalled by
their own tenacity. An edict of 1420 forbade prostitutes to enter the
cabarets; another of 1558 prohibited tavern-keepers from entertaining
them. Another denounced gambling, and prostitutes were only allowed
when desirous of refreshment to stand without and drink what was
handed to them from within. In England similar regulations was
established, and barbers especially were made the object of very severe
restrictions. Sempstresses and butchers were forbidden to employ any
females of bad character, and others were restrained by similar laws.
All these efforts, however, to render the sisterhood of prostitutes
a homeless, desolate, hopeless class--to deprive them of shelter, of
comforts, and the honest means of life--failed in purifying the manners
of the age. The baths became a regular resort of women belonging to
this order--in Paris, in Geneva, in Venice, in Rome, in Naples, in
Milan, in Ferrara, in Bologna, in Lucca, and in every other city of the
Peninsula--so that there was scarcely the keeper of a bath who was not
at the same time a brothel keeper, employing numbers of _Ruffiani_ to
procure attendance at his house. There were other cities in which baths
were publicly tolerated and recognised as places of prostitution. Among
these were Avignon and London. A statute of the Church of Avignon,
dated 1441, interdicted the use of certain baths, known to be brothels,
to the priests and clergy. An offence committed by day was not punished
half so severely as one committed by night. There is only one other
instance of a punishment inflicted during that age on men who violated
the public law of morals. It was that of certain citizens of Anvers in
Flanders, who were condemned to make a pilgrimage to expiate an offence
of this kind. On one occasion, indeed, of which the date is lost,
the magistrates of Bourdeaux caused a man to be hanged for forcibly
violating a prostitute.
In Avignon, however, the licence of prostitution was shortly taken
away. The residence of the popes in that city had attracted a concourse
of strangers from all parts of the globe, and brothels sprung up in
profusion in the neighbourhood of churches, at the door of the Papal
palace, and side by side with prelatical residences--a display of
libertinism so gross that the public acts of encouragement at once
ceased, and an edict drove all the prostitutes out of the city.
In London, as we have said, as at Avignon, prostitution took refuge in
the public baths--a practice of very ancient date. These places were
situated in the borough of Southwark, which was not included in the
city until 1550. It was a miserable quarter, full of inhabited ruins,
to which some public gardens, dedicated to dog and bear baiting, alone
attracted the people of the neighbourhood. In this general preliminary
sketch it is not necessary to say more of London.
In various parts of Europe a continual stream of edicts was poured
out against the system of prostitution; but it was only persecuting
the victims, instead of eradicating the causes. In some States, as
in Lombardy, men were forbidden to give them an asylum; they were
prohibited from appearing among honest citizens; they were prevented
from purchasing food or clothes, or borrowing money by the hire of
their persons; in fact, fines, prisons, whips, still continued to
attempt the reform of morals.
Hitherto, however, we have seen prostitution in some places protected,
but in all restrained, though everywhere freely exercised by those
persons who would brave its perils and its disgrace. It was now sought,
by the direct and continuous intervention of the law, to transform
it into a public institution, organized, watched, disciplined, by
particular officers, and subjected to special authority. In France,
and especially in Languedoc, these principles were, during the
middle ages, firmly established. Louis XI. proclaimed, that from the
remotest antiquity it was the custom in Languedoc to have a house
and asylum for public women. The most celebrated of these were at
Toulouse and Montpellier. That at Toulouse was known to exist during
the twelfth century, and by an abuse of terms, not uncommon at that
period, was called the Great Abbey. The Commune and the University
divided the expense, and were proprietors of the building, and a
good revenue was derived from it for municipal purposes. But in
1424 the receipts diminished considerably, to the great regret of
the governors. The turbulent youth of Toulouse behaved to the poor
girls, whom they sacrificed to their lust, with the utmost violence
and brutality--beating them and their children, breaking up the
furniture, and wrenching off even the doors of the house. Many
attempts were made to repress these outbreaks, but the prostitutes
were at length compelled to take refuge in the interior of the city.
Severe regulations were imposed upon them. All who were diseased were
compelled to live in solitude until cured, and some were whipped for
disobedience. On one occasion, when a famine prevented the inhabitants
from indulging in their ordinary pleasures, the prostitutes emigrated,
but returned to their post in 1560. The magistrates, shamed by public
outcry, which accused them of purchasing their robes from the tax on
debauched women, abandoned the money, at this time, to the hospitals;
but the administrators of these afterwards made them some compensation.
In 1566 a council was called to deliberate on the best means of ridding
the city from the profligacy and wickedness which had grown up through
the immense licensed brothels it contained. To increase the scandal,
four prostitutes were discovered in a monastery of Augustine friars.
Three of these unhappy girls were hung. Shortly afterwards three others
were found in a convent, and they also were sent to the gallows.
It appears that in 1587 prostitution was almost eradicated from
Toulouse, though it flourished in the rural districts around. Many
of the girls were forced to labour at cleansing the streets as a
punishment. Two decrees of Louis XI. and Charles VIII. indicate the
history of prostitution at Montpellier in the fifteenth century. A man
named Panais possessed and governed the place devoted to this purpose,
and dying, left a dynasty of brothel keepers--two sons, who associated
with a banker. They embellished the edifice, furnished it luxuriously,
constructed beautiful baths, and obtained a legal monopoly in their
infamous traffic, by engaging to pay a certain tax. However, in 1458,
another individual was permitted to establish himself, which he did
with _éclat_, and the women deserted their old quarters for the new
“hotel.” A public cause was made of the quarrel, and it was decided
that the original promoters should continue to enjoy their privilege.
The two brothel keepers, who gained the titles of “Friends and faithful
Councillors of the King of France,” grew wealthy, and their trade of
prostitution became one of the most important branches of enterprise in
the city.