The Burgher and the Whore: Prostitution in Early Modern Amsterdam (8 page)

The author of
Het Amsterdamsch Hoerdom
claims that ‘in the music houses there are frequently fifteen or sixteen whores of an evening,’ indeed ‘one time I counted twenty-one in a single house’.
47
Nowhere do we hear of anything like this number being arrested, however. In raids the maximum number of women taken away by the police was between eight and eleven, including accompanying maids and bawds.

The chaos of the first few minutes usually gave women a chance to flee. Many music houses had escape routes, often simply through a back door or via an adjoining house, although occasionally prostitutes were found in chests, under bedsteads, even in roof gutters.Word of a raid would spread quickly, since anyone who managed to escape would alert the other music houses—for a fee, naturally. The bailiff did not have sufficient manpower to prevent this.
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Urban expansion and the introduction of street-lighting

Het Amsterdamsch Hoerdom
points to market forces as the ultimate cause of the rise of the music houses, since establishments with whores could attract a larger clientele than those without, but the changing face of the city was important too. In the second half of the seventeenth cen- tury Amsterdam expanded considerably, and urban regeneration and the migration flows that resulted meant prostitutes were frequently forced to move on.

Such improvements often led to the demolition of old neighbour- hoods notorious for prostitution, a trend many people applauded.‘A happy Conversion! Houses of Filth and Uncleanliness turn’d into a House of Prayer!’ was the response of William Mountague when told that the New Church in The Hague had been built on a site where whorehouses previously stood.
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The shady taverns and stews behind the old Amsterdam Town Hall on Dam Square were demolished to make way for the new Town Hall. Not far away the new Stock Ex- change was built on the site of a stable block often named in older literary and archival sources as a hotbed of vice.The inns and taverns

along the
R
iver Amstel just outside the city gates, many of which were in fact bawdy-houses, were swallowed up by the expanding city.

At the same time, new opportunities arose. When the three major canals west of the Singel were built, the elite moved there from the old city centre, abandoning streets like the Warmoesstraat and the Zeedijk to social decline.The Zeedijk in particular became a street of prostitution.

Between sunrise and sunset people in Amsterdam had traditionally found their way around using handheld lanterns or by the scant glow of candles from a few lighted houses, but in
1668
the authorities

decided to implement Jan van der Heyden’s plan for street-lighting. By January
1670
a total of
1
,
800
lamp posts had been erected along the streets and canals, holding specially designed oil lamps, and in the fol- lowing decade another
600
were added. The impact was remarkable and the system was copied elsewhere in the Dutch
R
epublic and abroad.
49
Foreigners wrote enthusiastically about the new system.
50
Among the first to describe it was a German, Jörg Franz Müller, who wrote in August
1669
that he would often walk for hours through the

city at night and could see his way from one lamp to the next.
51
The main purpose was to make the streets safer, by deterring thieves and preventing people from falling from the canalside streets into the water, but it also gave a great boost to nightlife and the prostitution that went with it. Surely it can be no coincidence that the music houses emerged in the decade that followed.To judge by complaints and the frequency of arrests, the same period saw a rise in street prostitution after dark. It was in these years too that the number of nightwatchmen increased from
300
to
480
and the number of watches into which the city was divided was raised from two to four.
52

Travellers wrote with enthusiasm that ‘one walks the streets as if in broad daylight’, although we should perhaps imagine an effect rather more like that of ‘broad moonlight’. Indeed when the moon was full the lamps were not lit. The oil lamps probably suited the prostitutes rather well, since they shed enough light for them to attract glances from passers-by but cast enough shadow to conceal their faces and allow them to duck away should a constable or nightwatchman hap- pen by. The same goes for potential clients: enough light for walking on the street; enough darkness to hide in.

The fame of the music houses was perpetuated by popular literature and travel writing. A German writes about a visit to Amsterdam in
1683
, two years after the Dutch and French editions of
Het Amster- damsch Hoerdom
were published: ‘Anyone who walks along the alley- ways of an evening, after it has grown dark, can see the so-called music halls, where those who wish to do so can satisfy all their sensual desires for a fee.’
53
This is the first mention of a music house in a travelogue, but a visit soon became standard fare for tourists, who in turn became a vital source of revenue for the proprietors. A tidy profit could be made from foreign visitors even if they drank only the jug of inferior wine that was immediately brought to their table and for which they were charged a guilder. A beautifully furnished music house with musicians

and lavishly dressed prostitutes was not merely a fashionable brothel but a piece of theatre, stage-managed for the benefit, and at the ex- pense, of the inquisitive tourist. Patronage by people of rank, whether Dutch or foreigners, may even have helped to protect the music houses from strict enforcement of the law. Ironically, those very aspects that commentators among the elite wrote about so disapprovingly, such as the impersonation of social betters, the deplorable situation prostitutes found themselves in, and the cautious approach taken by the authori- ties, were fostered and financed by people from that same social elite, who visited out of curiosity and sometimes wrote about their experiences.
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Music houses and official policy

Policy and legislation, and the ways in which they are implemented, always have a significant impact on the business of prostitution. It is a trade that needs to adapt constantly, inventing new ways of getting around the law. Policy altered significantly over time, and the fate of music houses was far more subject to trends in law enforcement than that of whorehouses.
54
The public character of music houses, their size, and the noise generated by music and dancing meant it was hard for them to transform themselves into ‘silent houses’, while the capital investment they required made them financially vulnerable to inter- vention by the authorities.

In the final quarter of the seventeenth century there were regular raids. According to
Het Amsterdamsch Hoerdom
, the music houses were generally tolerated, but it was essential that ‘these people were dis- turbed from time to time, otherwise within a few years Amsterdam would be so full of whores and whorehouses that their number would almost exceed that of honest folk’.
55
It was mainly the prostitutes who were arrested and the punishments they received were light; such raids had little effect on those who ran music houses and plenty of scope remained for large, well-known establishments, in fact in this period they flourished. Then, at the end of the seventeenth century, the au- thorities adopted a new strategy, targeting the organizers personally with severe prison sentences and financially with fines and the confis- cation of clothing and musical instruments. Combined with the sheer number of raids, this spelled the end for many music houses.

One example is the downfall of De Zoete Inval (The Open House). From
1684
onwards, dozens of prostitutes were arrested there, but not until
28
February
1698
was the woman in charge, Lijsbeth Pieters Cheverijns, detained, tried, and banished.
56
Six months later a raid ren- dered up only three prostitutes, including one who walked the streets ‘to advertise the whores’, and the maid, who said she was currently running the business ‘because the mistress had been banished,. . . so that it might not be ruined’.
57
On
4
August
1699
two women were arrested, one of whom denied she was a whore but admitted she had frequented the music houses ‘when they were still the fashion’.
58
There is no further mention of this once famous establishment in the judicial records.

For a while the music houses stubbornly revived. From March to October
1701
there were several major raids, but on
3
November the consistory of the
R
eformed Church complained to the burgomasters that ‘the whorehouses and music houses on the Zeedijk and elsewhere have opened their doors again, to the great annoyance and despair of the congregation’.
59
This pattern was repeated over several years but eventually the new policy started to produce results. Many well-known

music houses closed down and only a few struggled on.

The change in law-enforcement policy had an impact on whore- houses as well. Bawds no longer asked girls to stand in their doorways to attract customers but sent them off to the ‘cruising lane’. Fearing raids, some brothel-keepers left their maids in charge at night and slept elsewhere; they might even rent a room nearby as accommodation for the prostitutes. Should they be arrested, maids and prostitutes had strict orders to deny the true nature of the business, sometimes ‘on pain of death’.
60
Brothel-keepers would go to great lengths to convince the courts they had done nothing unlawful. Jacobus Klink, the keeper of a music house and a talented musician who had mastered twenty instru- ments, specialized in playing a small organ just outside the room where men withdrew with prostitutes. He had been forced out of a previous address for running a brothel and because of complaints about the

noise, but he denied everything, saying he had been evicted on that occasion ‘because the man living upstairs was a
R
oman Catholic and did not want psalms to be played there’.
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The music houses that remained in business clearly had a hard time of it. In
1722
one final raid took place at the Hof van Holland on the Zeedijk. It still boasted an ensemble of violins and double basses, and

beautifully dressed prostitutes, five in number on the occasion of the raid. The proprietress, Catrijn Christiaans, had a second house in the same street, where she had hung out a sign reading ‘Copenhagen’ (her native city). There she lived with her husband and child, along with several women,‘so that she could have them fetched should she be in need of whores at the Hof van Holland’. Her home also served as a place where the prostitutes at the music house could hide should they narrowly escape arrest.
62
The famous music house is never mentioned subsequently in any of the sources.

A few months later De
R
ijzende Zon on the Zeedijk was closed down for good.The couple in charge, Catrina Cahari and Willem de

Vroe, insisted for all they were worth that no prostitutes lived there and that music was played no more than once a week. Their guests sometimes danced, they said, but in a manner that was entirely hon- ourable and virtuous, partnered only by the women they had brought with them, ‘as usually happens on Sundays after church and also on Mondays’. Again, evidence from witnesses contradicts this. Catrina had a second house where ‘several whores are given lodgings, being there to serve the men who come to dance at the house on the Zee- dijk’. It was disguised as a tobacconist’s shop.
63

In these years the authorities effectively forced the music houses into decline.The organizers, threatened with lengthy prison terms and loss of capital, retreated. Music was no longer played every evening, fewer prostitutes were present, and only a handful actually lived on the premises. The women could no longer afford to dress far above their station.The glamour was gone. Measures were taken to spread the risk and those in charge would look for a suitable front to disguise the real business, like Catrina Cahari’s tobacconist’s shop. An important side effect of all this was that tourists stayed away—or so it seems, since music houses rarely feature any longer in travel accounts. The loss of the tourist trade must have meant a significant drop in income.

After the mid-eighteenth century, prostitution was increasingly tol- erated.There were even years in which not a single prosecution took place and such enforcement campaigns as there were—in
1768
,
1789
, and
1793
—mainly targeted street prostitution.
64
The authorities did intervene to curb disturbances or abuses in music houses or brothels, in which case organizers could expect unusually harsh fines. In the final quarter of the eighteenth century especially, a blind eye was turned to prostitution as long as it was reasonably discreet and nothing

too excessive went on. Once more it made sense to invest in music houses, and some proprietors were in a position to house and clothe a larger number of women than ever before, converting their music houses into luxury ballrooms and distributing pictures of them throughout the city (see Plate
4
). The tourists, too, came back.
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Violence in music houses

In the first half of the eighteenth century prostitution not only became confined to the poorest districts, it entrenched itself there and the po- lice often encountered violent resistance when they came to make arrests. A raid on music houses on the Zeedijk and the Geldersekade one Sunday evening in late August
1721
ended in a pitched battle. Three deputy bailiffs and their officers were confronted by a crowd of sailors trying to rescue the women who had been arrested.The officers had no option but to retreat, return the prostitutes to the music house, and first do battle with the sailors.They won, but several women man- aged to get away.
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