The Burgher and the Whore: Prostitution in Early Modern Amsterdam (33 page)

Some prostitutes invested in fine clothes on their own behalf, although generally on credit, paying in weekly instalments to the women and Jews who dominated the trade in second-hand garments.
59
There are also stories of clothing and other finery being given to women as farewell presents by lovers who then abandoned them to a life of prostitution.
60
Jacomijntje Hendriks sold the jewellery her former
mainteneur
had given her so that she could make a down- payment on her clothes.
61
Such stories were told mainly by women who had been arrested in the larger and better-known music houses, to which prostitutes would not be admitted if they were anything less than beautifully dressed.

Bawds in particular profited from the demand for fine apparel, partly because they made money from prostitutes’ debts and indebtedness, and partly because the trade in clothing was itself an important source of income. They would often buy second-hand garments from dealers, have them repaired or altered by seamstresses, and then sell them on to prostitutes.
Het Amsterdamsch Hoerdom
suggests that a great deal of money was made in this way, especially from new girls who were not yet wise to such practices and longed to have pretty things.
62
Items of clothing might also be hired out. In
1658
a bawd was convicted of forcing her girls to rent their linen from her, having stored away their own clothes.
63
As the sums charged confirm, this was rightly regarded as extortion. One shilling (six stivers) per week was paid for a linen shift, two or three stivers for white aprons and neckerchiefs.
64
Underwear was more com- monly acquired in this way than outerwear, which was far more expen- sive. A mantua cost a shilling (six stivers) a day or six shillings a week, a
fontange
four shillings a week.
65
This was a great deal of money, certainly in relation to a woman’s normal daily wage of eight to ten stivers.

There were bawds and procuresses who went to brothels and music houses specifically to sell garments. Stijntje Pieters, for example, ran a whorehouse in the
R
idderstraat but was arrested in a famous music house on the Geldersekade ‘having in her lap clothes for the dressing of whores’.
66
Those who did not have sufficient capital or credit could

sell on commission, as did Anne Marie Trevers, who was arrested as a bawd and said she sold linen and other fabrics to whorehouses on behalf of another bawd ‘for a stiver in the guilder’.
67
The low commis- sion of
5
per cent demonstrates the value of fabrics. A gown might well require material worth dozens of guilders, whereas the seamstress who made it would be paid only a few.
68
Many bawds kept supplies of clothing, as indicated by reports of confiscation and theft, like that of ‘two mantuas, two skirts, a
japon
[i.e. a Japanese robe or kimono], and two
fontanges
’ found in a brothel on
19
June
1691
.
69

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a woman’s everyday attire consisted of a calf-length linen shift with sleeves worn as un- derwear, a skirt with one or more petticoats, and a pair of stays or a laced bodice. On top of all this she wore a short jacket, an apron, and a neckerchief that covered her breasts and throat. On her head was a cap or a bonnet, depending on the period (Plates
9
and
11
). The decoration of this basic wardrobe was mainly concentrated in the jacket—which might be of beautiful material, possibly trimmed with fur—the apron, perhaps embroidered or decorated with lace, and the headwear, which in the seventeenth century especially could be decorated with gold cap brooches.
70
In the higher social circles, long cloak-like robes and dresses, known in English as gowns, mantuas, or cymars, came into fashion in the seventeenth century. These were made not of wool but of light material such as silk, satin, or chintz and often drawn back over the hips to expose a skirt of fine material beneath. These are the garments frequently mentioned as wrongful attire for whores, especially in the late seventeenth century. The il- lustrations in
Het Amsterdamsch Hoerdom
and other popular books demonstrate what they must have looked like (Plate
6
).The clothing shown in brothel paintings varies more widely, from the extravagant and fantastical costumes with deep décolleté depicted by Gerard van Honthorst to the simple everyday attire painted by Jan Steen and Hendrik Pot. By the end of the century some prostitutes were wear- ing the
fontange
, the complicated headdress that first became fashion- able at the French court. Around
1700
several
fontange
-makers from France were found among the arrested prostitutes. These extravagant and costly items and clothes are unlikely to have been part of the everyday garb of ordinary prostitutes, but many of them must have done their best to find second-hand garments that made a similar impression.

Prostitutes certainly tried to follow the latest fashions. In the eight- eenth century mention is made of morning gowns and kimonos, and from mid-century onwards there are frequent references to riding cos- tume, made up of a nipped-in men’s riding jacket with braiding worn with a wide skirt. Boswell, for example, danced in an Amsterdam music house ‘with a fine lady in laced riding clothes’.
71
This was the ‘Amazon costume’ that many inveighed against because it was ‘androgynous apparel’ and therefore immoral.
72
Such fulminating was as ineffective as it had been against wigs; in the very highest circles, in which women rode horses, the riding costume was particularly popular.

In the eighteenth century prostitutes may typically have worn many skirts. In
1778
Desjobert, describing whores in a music house, distin- guished between women dressed in the French manner and those who looked more typically Dutch.The latter wore their hair down and had multiple beauty spots and ‘
une très grande quantité de jupons
’ (a very great quantity of skirts).
73
This recalls the prostitute Aaltje Mulder who was caught with a man in
1728
,‘her bodice unlaced and her jacket hanging over a chair along with five skirts, and wearing only one skirt, rolled

up to the knees’.
74
The effect of all these layers of relatively short skirts can be seen in a print by Thomas
R
owlandson inspired by a scene he witnessed on a visit to Amsterdam in
1796
(Plate
5
).

The clothing worn by prostitutes was intended to signal that they were sexually appealing, willing, and available. One such sign was the baring of the chest. Anyone who did this in public risked being taken for a whore, since it indicated that ‘the wares were for sale’—clearly ‘the shop was open’.
75
Such a blatant display would not be tolerated. Three girls were arrested and accused of ‘sitting in an extremely disor- derly manner with their bosoms bare’ in the front room of the music house De Posthoorn.
76
Nakedness was regarded as thoroughly dishon- ourable; the nude models used by painters were often prostitutes.
77
Two diary entries, in
1692
and
1697
, both concerning men attached to the retinues of princes (the Elector of Brandenburg and Tsar Peter of

R
ussia) refer to naked whores in brothels.
78
Several books published in the late seventeenth century describe this, too, and one illustration

depicts the women wearing masks.
79

The subject of prostitutes’ clothing is complex.Typical ‘whores’ garb’ such as plunging necklines, make-up, wigs, and in later years riding costumes, were worn by women in courtly circles.That prostitutes posed as members of the highest strata of society caused annoyance

but at the same time attracted attention and of course in some cases customers. ‘There is no great
R
eason to fear, that many of the better sort of People will be tempted by them,’ Mandeville writes.
80
Those taken in were assumed to be mainly country folk and foreigners.The farmers in
Boereverhaal
are hugely impressed by the gowns, wigs, rib- bons, bows, and jewels worn by the whores, whom they think even more beautifully dressed than the wife of the bailiff of their village. Indeed, it would not surprise them to hear that the women speak
‌
‌

Latin!
81
The foreigners are mainly Germans, proverbially stupid in those days. ‘Krauts ...have rather to do with an ugly nasty Quean in fine Cloaths, than a Beautiful Mayd in a Plain Dress.’
82
They imagine those who go about in gowns and mantuas to be the daughters of distinguished families. Not all Germans were so naive, incidentally.To Peter Hansen Hajstrup, a country boy from Schleswig Holstein visiting the big city for the first time, an Amsterdam prostitute certainly looked like a
Adelß Jumfer
(a young noblewoman), but he could tell soon enough from her behaviour that she was a
leichtfertige Hure
(a wanton whore), so he steered well clear (see Appendix
1
). Amsterdam men fancied themselves resistent to having the wool pulled over their eyes and there were prostitutes who therefore chose to dress simply. Anna Smitshuizen, for example, was known as ‘Anna the Maid’, since she behaved and dressed like a virtuous domestic servant. Her biogra- pher—she was murdered by her jealous lover in
1775
, and the murder trial engendered many publications—claims she ended up as a prosti- tute because poverty had forced her to take her good clothes to the pawnshop, after which she could no longer find a decent job as a maid.
83
If there is any truth in this scenario, then she exchanged work that a lack of appropriate clothing had put beyond her reach for the life of a prostitute dressed in that very attire.

Finding customers

Any business needs clients.This usually means having to advertise, but prostitution requires secrecy and discretion.The dilemma was resolved in various ways.‘Silent houses’, in other words whorehouses not rec- ognizable as such from the outside, relied on word of mouth, but they probably also made use of go-betweens, such as deliverymen with their characteristic Amsterdam barrows.Written lists of addresses may

have circulated, the ‘List of Chamber-Nymphs and Music Houses in Amsterdam’ (
c
.
1675
) may be one such document. Once inside, it seems it was occasionally possible to choose a woman on the basis of por- traits. This is depicted, for example, on the title page of Crispijn de Passe’s
Spigel der alderschoonste cortisanen
(
1630
) (Mirror of the Most Beautiful Courtesans). Jillis Noozeman’s farce
Licht Klaertje
(
1645
) (Wanton Klaertje) features a bawd who shows potential customers small panel paintings with portraits of women who can be fetched.
84
There are tales of women in Utrecht and elsewhere who were accused during quarrels with neighbours of having been ‘panel whores’ in Am-

sterdam in their youth.
85
In
1681
Jean-François
R
egnard described an Amsterdam brothel where men entered via ‘a room that was con-

nected to various little rooms with on each door a portrait of the person to be found inside’.You chose and paid.‘And if the portrait was far too flattering: hard luck!’
86
These examples date from the seven- teenth century. It cannot have been the practice in more than a small number of brothels, if only because of the costs involved.

In public whorehouses the women attracted clients by standing in the doorway or on the pavement outside, or in the case of upstairs dwellings by leaning out of the window. Sometimes one of the girls would serve as a ‘display whore’ (
pronkhoer
), sitting outside the entrance or in the front room ‘in splendour’, in other words specially decked out for the purpose.There was street publicity too. Music houses might send maids out into the streets ‘to advertise the whores’. They would speak to passers-by ‘to lure them into the whorehouses’.
87
Catharina

R
oelofs harassed men on the street, begging them to give her ‘a stiver for coffee’; anyone who did so was asked ‘whether he had any life in

his body’ and invited to go with her to a certain Mistress Gijsenbier: ‘There you’ll get a good glass of wine and a pretty girl to your taste, a pleasant room and a good bed.’
88

Such efforts were often directed at specific groups of potential cli- ents. Marretje van de Bor, arrested as a bawd in
1742
, told the court she was a costermonger, but her neighbours testified that although she certainly had a fixed pitch for her barrow at the Nieuwebrug, at night she would stand there and accost sailors: ‘I have pretty wenches at home, come to my basement this evening.’
89
In
1661
a maid was sent out onto the streets to distribute little notes with the address of ‘a cer- tain damsel’; the maid, who could not read, handed the notes to several young men, telling them ‘that they contain some news’.
90
At the end

of the eighteenth century, in the more elegant of the music houses, prostitutes would carry cards bearing their addresses to give to men who showed an interest in them.
91