The Burgher and the Whore: Prostitution in Early Modern Amsterdam
Read The Burgher and the Whore: Prostitution in Early Modern Amsterdam Online
Authors: Lotte van de Pol
THE BU
R
GHE
R
AND THE WHO
R
E
Frontispiece to
D’Openhertige Juffrouw, of d’ontdekte geveinsdheid
, ii (Leiden,
c
.1681).
AND THE
WHORE
P R OSTITUTION IN EAR LY MODERN AMSTERD AM
LO TTE VAN DE POL
Translated by Liz Waters
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
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© Lotte van de Pol 2011
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First published 2011
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available
Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn ISBN 978–0–19–921140–1
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
‘Amsterdam is the Academy of Whoredom’:
Prostitutes, Brothels, and Music Houses
18Urban expansion and the introduction of street-lighting
34‘Whores and scoundrels always talk of their honour’: Honour, Prostitution, and the Respectable Citizenry
43Female honour and male honour
48Honour and disgrace in linguistic usage
49‘The caterpillar in a cabbage, the canker in the leg’:
Attitudes to Prostitution, Prostitutes, and Women
67Abhorrence of ‘silent’ whores
69From caring mother to punishing father
70Het Amsterdamsch Hoerdom
and
D’Openhertige Juffrouw
79‘The world cannot be governed with a Bible in
the hand’: Prosecution Policies and Their Background
91The judicial apparatus and legal proceedings
93The Spin House as symbol and reality
97Prosecution policy in figures
102The municipal authorities and the
R
eformed Church
104‘The devil! I must have money for this’: The Dark
The characters of the bailiff and his men
120Buying off charges of adultery
125Deputy Bailiff Schravenwaard and the West Frisian
‘Birds of a Feather Flock Together’: Prostitutes,
Work, origins, and migration in context
144Amsterdam’s surplus of women
149‘Miraculous tricks, to earn a living by idling’:
Sex for Money and Money for Sex
166Terms of employment in prostitution
169Appendix
1
.
Contemporary Writers on AmsterdamMusic Houses and Prostitution
232Appendix
2
. Trials for Prostitution in Amsterdam by Decade,
1650
–
1749
239Appendix
3
. Dutch Currency of the Early Modern Period
240This page intentionally left blank
Cover:
The Prodigal Son
(
1622
). Painting by Gerard van Honthorst (
1592
–
1656
)page ii: Frontispiece to
D’Openhertige Juffrouw, of d’ontdekte geveinsdheid
, ii (Leiden,
c
.
1681
)Prince Eugene of Savoy in Madame Thérèse’s brothel on the Prinsengracht,
c
.
1720
. Pen-and-ink drawing by Cornelis Troost (
1696
–
1750
)The Spin House on the corner of the Oudezijds Achterburgwal
and the Spinhuissteeg. From
Historische beschryving der stadt Amsterdam(
1663
)Interior of a music house. From
Le Putanisme d’Amsterdam
, the French version of
Het Amsterdamsch Hoerdom
(
1681
)The interior of the music house De Pijl in the Pijlsteeg, late eighteenth century
A Dutch Abbess and Her Nymphs
. Print by Thomas
R
owlandson (
1756
–
1827
),
1797
.Frontispiece to
Le Putanisme d’Amsterdam
(
1681
)The Proposition
,
1631
. Painting by Judith Leyster (
1609
–
60
)The workroom in the Spin House. From Tobias van Domselaer,
Beschryvinge van Amsterdam
(
1665
)The workroom in the Spin House, second half of the seventeenth century. Drawing by Francoys Dancx (? –
c
.
1703
)The Regents and Regentesses of the Spin House
, (detail). Painting by Bartholomeus van der Helst (
1613
–
70
),
c
.
1650VOC sailor dancing with his sweetheart. Mezzotint by Jacob Gole (
1660
–
1737
) after Cornelis Dusart (
1660
–
1704
),
c
.
1700
This publication was realised with the support of the Prince Bernhard Cultural Foundation and the Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature
I
n the early morning of
29
January
1701
, in a public privy in Ham- burg, the body of a woman was found: murdered, stark naked, and without a head. The culprits, a man and two women, were quickly caught. The man had strangled the victim and together they had de- capitated the body because they needed a human head to brew a magic potion. One of the three, Anna Isabe Buncke, was further accused of living as a man for several years and even of having twice been offi- cially married to a woman.That too was a serious crime, but Buncke had an excuse. At the time, she explained in court, she really had been a man. Dressed in men’s clothing she had travelled to Holland as a seasonal worker and there had been given a male body, through sor- cery, by the whores of Amsterdam. ‘From the men who lived in her neighbourhood, and with whom she had gone to a whorehouse, she had heard that the whores could remove the “membrum virile” of men whom they disliked or who refused to pay. Also, any fellow un- happy with his penis need only go to them and they could supply him with a bigger one.’ She had done exactly that, acquired a penis, and stuck it to her body.Then she went for a bite to eat with the whores and was able to have sex with one of them a few hours later without
any problem at all. It had cost her a ducat.
1
Anna’s tale of the Amsterdam whores is a fabulation, but no doubt another story lies behind it. Perhaps some of her compatriots in the harbourside lodging house where she was staying cajoled Heinrich, as she called herself, into visiting a whorehouse with them. They may have told the timid ‘boy’ that if he failed to perform the women would deprive him of his sexual organ, and that if he was worried his prick was too small they could sell him another.Anna Isabe Buncke was not quite right in the head, and a feeble-minded youth could easily be
