The Burgher and the Whore: Prostitution in Early Modern Amsterdam (12 page)

There was relatively little prostitution in rich areas, which perhaps goes without saying, but the same was true of several poor but socially homogenous parts of town, such as the islands where the shipwrights lived. Music houses and brothels were mostly located in the poor dis- tricts near the harbour, the area that is Amsterdam’s ‘red-light district’ to this day, although in periods of active prosecution, smaller whore- houses tended to be spread out across the city and they were not al- ways recognizable as such from the outside. Generally speaking, the more respectable the street the less noticeable the whorehouse, indeed ‘silent whores’ and kept women might even live at desirable addresses, at times causing tension and conflict with people living nearby.

The nuisance caused by whorehouses and the conflicts that arose between brothel-keepers and their neighbours are extensively docu- mented in the Confession Books. In the seventeenth century espe- cially, there were many official complaints, usually in the form of appeals to the municipal authorities, signed by groups of local resi- dents.Tensions might well lead to quarrels, disturbances, and fights that ended up before the courts. Complaints and testimonies from neigh- bours repeatedly mention noise that kept them awake, threats, scandal- ous goings-on, and indignation at the fact that honest folk could not walk along the street without being importuned. In
1723
six people testified against their neighbour, a brothel-keeper, claiming that she ‘has been keeping an extremely shameless bawdy-house and has caused much strife and violence and makes such a din at night that people

cannot sleep’.
55
In a case against a whorehouse in
1737
, five neighbours complained that ‘there is great violence and racket every night and the neighbours can plainly hear that obscene acts are being committed’.
56
The noise made by busy brothels was a real problem. After sunset the city gates were locked and the shutters on the houses closed; there must have been a considerable contrast between the silence of the night and the coming and going and general hubbub of daytime. Nor- mal work depended on daylight, so people got up at sunrise and went to bed early. Poor people lived cheek by jowl and, as is clear even from these few examples, their houses were far from soundproof. Prostitu- tion was a night-time activity and even brothels without musicians and dancing made enough racket to keep the neighbours awake.The noise of dancing and leaping, singing and violin playing, and people tramp- ing up and down stairs at night are mentioned time and again in ap- peals to the authorities. Drunken customers quarrelling or fighting in the streets outside brothels after dark would at least prompt the night-

watchmen to intervene to restore calm.

Brothel-keepers and prostitutes often used threats to prevent com- plaints being made and these are graphically described in the judicial records. In
1663
Dorothee Lucas threatened ‘to set the whole neigh- bourhood ablaze and slice her neighbours’ chops’.
57
Trijntje Meynders, who ran not only a whorehouse but a ‘den of thieves’, was accused by several neighbours in
1666
of ‘keeping an abominable house and of- tentimes threatening the neighbours lest anyone dare to complain’.
58
‘I’ll have a red ribbon put through your cheek,’ a bawd shouted at her neighbours in a narrow alley in
1740
.
59
These were by no means always empty threats, which was further reason for neighbours to act as a group. There are documented cases of men taking revenge on local residents who had reported their wives for brothel-keeping.

Arguments were not confined to verbal and physical violence; ges- tures and even glances came into play. A brothel-keeper called Mari Moraals followed a girl who had walked past her house, pulled her bonnet off her head and tore it to shreds, then gave her a sound beat- ing.The reason? She had ‘stared at some whores who were standing in her doorway’.
60
Disputes over the use of public space were a serious matter.Visible prostitution was a scandal for the whole street and the presence of prostitutes ‘on public display’ caused enormous irritation. Written complaints often state that respectable men could not walk

past without being accosted.
R
esidents of an alley off the notorious

Zeedijk claimed that the whores assailed passing men ‘in an indecent manner’.
61
At eleven o’clock one morning, they said,Wijntje Hendriks had ‘dragged a respectable burgher inside, and when he tried to leave she flew at him and tore out his hair’. Wijntje denied this, but ‘three honourable persons’ who had witnessed the incident gave evi- dence against her.
62
In a whorehouse run by Marretje Pieters the girls were said to stand outside and call to passers-by; those who refused to come in would be ‘spat upon’.
63

It is striking that until the mid-eighteenth century people rarely complained that open sexual display had a baleful influence on chil- dren. In fact it was quite often children (especially boys) who, by publicly hurling insults, singing mocking songs, or even smashing whorehouse windows, expressed the feelings of the neighbourhood. They were sometimes encouraged to do so; in
1689
a woman gave two
17
-year-old boys a shilling each to stand outside the door of a ‘fetchable whore’ (
haalhoer
), throw stones, and shout at her that she was ‘a Jews’ whore and other filthy things’, all because the prostitute had insulted her sister.
64
Such incidents could easily escalate. Willem Stapel, ‘concubine’ to brothel-keeper Grietje Bosmans, seriously as- saulted two boys in
1749
because they were among a group that had shouted ‘whore, whore’ at Grietje and pelted her with vegetable waste. On a previous occasion he had beaten up a female neighbour during a quarrel. It is interesting that Willem initially—although to no avail— tried to persuade Grietje to hit the woman herself: women were sup-

posed to fight with women, men with men.
65
An earlier example, from
1743
, concerns a former brothel-keeper, Anna
R
egina Cramlits, whom everyone knew to be a kept woman, the mistress of a married man.When local children followed her singing a little ditty they had made up about her she became so furious that she shot at them with a gun.
66
Such reactions to provocation would mobilize the entire neighbourhood. On this occasion every window of Anna’s house was

smashed.

If she did not adhere to the unwritten rule that prostitution was for and about outsiders, a brothel-keeper might call down upon herself the wrath of the whole neighbourhood. Bawds were regularly accused of leading burghers’ children astray. In
1748
a man complained about one Mietje Hekmans and her whores ‘that they have often tempted his ap- prentice, who is still a boy, to go inside’.
67
If anyone tried to turn a girl from the neighbourhood into a whore the reaction would be fierce. In

1724
a bawd called
R
achel de Wilde, known as Yids’
R
achel, who lived in an alley behind the Oude Kerk, told a girl who worked in a tobacco workshop opposite that ‘if she wanted to come to her house one evening, then she would earn in a single night, with much pleasure,

more than she now earned by working in the tobacco trade for a whole week’. Worse still, she had told her this surreptitiously, in a language unknown to people standing nearby, possibly Norwegian.
68

Having a whorehouse next door was felt to be a curse. In
1749
, per- haps as part of a personal vendetta, a surgeon placed a brothel-keeper called Maria Wiggers in a house he had rented, saying:‘If you move into that house until May then I’ll give you a half-barrel of beer free of charge and if you run short of money I’ll also lend you fifty guilders; you can do whatever you wish in that house, you can dance there, leap about etcetera, and the more noise you make the happier I’ll be.’
6
9
The police put a stop to this after the neighbours complained.

It was not only nuisance that led to complaints. In testimony from neighbours, moral indignation at people who turned accepted norms on their heads comes through loud and clear. Men and women arrive at ‘indecent hours’, the neighbours hear ‘improper and lewd language’, and the result is ‘much scandal and nuisance and the want of a proper night’s sleep’.
70
Complaints about drunkenness, violence, fighting, quarrelling, the singing of obscene songs, the presence of Jews, married men, or thieves who had been exposed on the public scaffold, and the allegation that burghers’ children were sometimes lured inside are all part of the standard repertoire. The way neighbours describe them, it seems as if whorehouses existed not so much to provide paid sex as to fulfil a need for places where a life could be lived to the full,‘the natu- ral life’ that people in the seventeenth century saw as the opposite of the Christian life.
71
This included fighting. In
1707
, as part of divorce proceedings, a maid testified that her employer was often drunk and regularly came home with torn clothes; her description was regarded as indicating that he habitually visited brothels.
72
The word ‘godless’ often appears, in phrases such as ‘they sing godless songs’, or assertions that every night there was ‘a godless life of singing, dancing, and leaping’.
73

If we are to believe the evidence submitted by neighbours, they often first tried to solve the problem themselves by calmly pointing out to those concerned what they were doing wrong.The neighbours of brothel-keeper Marritje Duikers admonished her in
1743
‘for her

unseemly life and the difficulties that arise from it’. In practice such admonitions often involved threats to call in the bailiff (also known as the chief officer), to which brothel-keepers tended to respond either with disdain or with threats of their own. When ‘the neighbours said that they intended to complain about her deplorable way of life and the violence repeatedly caused by her and her whores,’ Marritje had the audacity to say, ‘The chief officer is my uncle’, which was of course untrue and was construed as an example of ‘great insolence’ and duly punished.
74
A century earlier, in
1652
, when prostitute Aaltje Jans ‘threatened to send thugs after them and to attack them with knives’, the neighbours warned her they would complain to the bailiff on grounds of intimidation. This made little impression on Aaltje; she lifted her skirts and slapped her bare backside, saying, ‘that’s for the bailiff and that’s for their lordships’.
75
In
1702
prostitute Mary Dirks answered in a similar situation,‘I shit on the
schout
(bailiff )’.
76

Petitions to the aldermen and statements made in court were as likely to come from men as from women, but day-to-day contact in the neighbourhood was largely a female affair. Men and women occupied different social spheres, so it is understandable that whorehouses, which were usually run by female bawds, were likely to find themselves up against local women, who regulated neighbourhood life.
77
This applied especially to the poorer parts of town, where many men were away at sea and at any one time there were far more women around.

Confrontations were not uncommon. One sensitive area concerned the amount bawds and whores could earn. Prostitution was more or less the only ‘women’s work’ that could command good pay.The price a woman of the lower orders paid for her good name was a lifetime of hard work for little financial reward. It was felt to be extremely pro- vocative for whores to brag about their earnings, so brothel-keeper Johanna Honsdijkert was definitely going too far when she said, stand- ing at her doorway within earshot of the neighbours, ‘that she could earn a lot of money, because if rich customers came along she would take them for herself and leave the others to her girls’.
78
When one woman said to a neighbour who ran a whorehouse that she did not understand how she could do what she did, the bawd answered,‘What the devil’s wrong with it? I have to make a living by some means.’
79
Another brothel-keeper gave her neighbour a piece of unsolicited ad- vice:‘You could keep a pretty girl to earn your bread.’
80
Such remarks led to ferocious arguments and fights between neighbours.

Acceptance of prostitution?
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Conflicts are always better documented than good relations, especially in the kind of judicial and notarial archives that are the main source of the above examples. There must have been a degree of toleration of prostitution. In contrast to thieves caught red-handed, prostitutes were not subjected to ‘the grinding’ (
maling
), a form of popular justice whereby bystanders would encircle and squeeze the culprit between them. But neither did people help whores to stay out of the hands of the police, as they might a beggar. Those few sailors, soldiers, or ap- prentices who tried to stand up for them were usually both young and drunk. Some local people actually profited from prostitution.Whore- houses purchased considerable quantities of food and drink, provided work for cleaners, seamstresses, clothing sellers, and musicians, and gave tips to deliverymen and local girls who ran errands for the women. It was an offence to rent out premises for the purpose of prostitution, but the trade could not have existed without property owners who were

willing to do so.
81
Even the consistory of the
R
eformed Church some- times had to call members to account for breaking the law in this way,