The Burgher and the Whore: Prostitution in Early Modern Amsterdam (18 page)

In Altona he may have resisted temptation, but in England he has a sexual relationship with a girl called Nenny (Anna) Harrison and in Italy too he has sex with at least one prostitute. About these women, however, van der Saan writes no longer as a moralizing observer but as a critical consumer, noting the various ways prostitutes manage to re- lieve clients of their money and comparing those of different coun- tries. He prefers Italian whores, since they speak sweetly and flatter, are passionate in bed, and charge little extra for food and drink.
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He does not write about any experiences he may have had with Dutch prosti- tutes. Later in the eighteenth century, James Boswell’s journal would reflect the same combination of factors: abhorrence and fascination, fear of sin and of venereal disease, sympathy for the women and anger at their fraudulent practices, disapproval of men who visit whores yet an inability to resist the temptation. It is probably no coincidence that both men were Calvinists, nor that their writing was intended as a means of self-criticism and self-improvement, not for public perusal.

‘The world cannot be governed with a Bible in the hand’: Prosecution Policies and

Their Background

T

o contemporaries the main problem with prostitution was the illicit sex, not the trade itself.The authorities, however, could not restrict themselves to the moral aspects, since they were also faced with practical problems of public order, public decency, and public health, as well as complaints from neighbours, appeals for help from parents, and concerns about the abuse of minors and the spread of venereal disease. They had to act, but their power to intervene was circumscribed by legislation and limited according to the powers and capacities of the

police and the courts.

Throughout Western history, governments, churches, and the majority of the population have seen prostitution as an evil, or at least as socially undesirable, but the problem is always how best to tackle it.As with com- parable issues like drug and alcohol abuse, the basic choice governments have is between prohibition and regulation.An outright ban allows them ostensibly to keep their hands clean. Although prostitution may diminish as a result, it does not vanish but is driven underground, allying itself with

criminality, and the authorities forfeit their ability to monitor or control it.
R
egulation means officially acknowledging prostitution as a legitimate business, a stance that is bound to arouse criticism.

The contrast between the two options is less clear cut in practice than in theory. A total ban is impossible to implement, and will lead to partial toleration; conversely, regulation leaves some forms of

prostitution subject to prosecution. Irrespective of the rules imposed, there are periods when enforcement lapses and the trade is more or less tolerated, and these alternate with periods of strict enforcement of the law. The history of prostitution in Amsterdam clearly illustrates how policy can swing from regulation to prohibition and back again, and likewise how its implementation veers between strictness and tol- erance.
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This process continues to the present day. In
2000
Dutch law was changed to legalize prostitution as a trade and profession. In prac- tice, however, this legalization has meant stricter regulation and a curb- ing of the trade, especially in Amsterdam.
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Legislation
2

As in most other European cities, in the late Middle Ages prostitution in Amsterdam was permitted on certain conditions. From
1466
on- wards the rules can be found in the municipal statutes. In the first place only the bailiff ’s men were allowed to run brothels.They were them- selves regarded as dishonourable in this period, so the management of a dishonourable business could be assigned to them.The police there- fore supervised the trade and earned money from it at the same time. Prostitution was permitted only in one area of Amsterdam, along the Pijlsteeg and the Halsteeg (now the Damstraat), two narrow parallel streets leading off Dam Square. Married men and priests were forbid- den to visit prostitutes, since they would be violating their holy vows; brothels were meant only for unmarried men who would otherwise be unable to control themselves. There were further stipulations that served to separate and shield reputable burghers from prostitution and to make clear which women were honest and which were not. Covert iniquity, such as the activities of procuresses who operated by stealth (‘ugly old bitches, who will do anything for money, gifts, or tasty food’), was a prime concern.
3
Women living elsewhere in the city who were found to be leading dishonest lives would be led in a public parade, with loud music, to the official brothels. Unlike many other European cities, there were no sumptuary laws to distinguish prostitutes in pub- lic. In Amsterdam as in much of Western Europe, those who wished to reform could take refuge in a Magdalene convent.

After the Alteration of
1578
, when Amsterdam joined the Protestant revolt against Spain, the brothels were closed and the ‘old indecent

custom of serving drink and keeping women’ on the part of the bail- iff ’s men was abolished.The Political Ordinance (
Politieke Ordonnantie
), promulgated in
1580
and covering the Province of Holland and West Frisia, set out the laws of the new regime with regard to marriage and morality.
4
On
20
August
1580
the Amsterdam municipal authorities issued an additional statute, aimed mainly at the organizers of prostitu- tion, ‘who by keeping whores attempt to lead the children of honest folk astray’.
5
Such people really deserved the death penalty, the accom- panying text opines, but the statute limited itself to a punishment for a first offence of being displayed on the public scaffold plus a fine, and for a second offence whipping and banishment from the city. Penalties for ‘whores practising whoredom’ were at the discretion of the court. These laws and statutes remained in force for over two centuries with- out being reiterated, supplemented, or changed. In
1811
the french occupiers introduced the Code Pénal, which remained in force after they left in
1813
. This Lawbook stipulated that only those guilty of leading minors into prostitution had committed a punishable offence. Prostitution as such no longer fell under the provisions of the criminal law; it would not do so again until
1911
.
6
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The judicial apparatus and legal proceedings

In Amsterdam the enforcement of the law was in the hands of the bailiff and the aldermen, collectively addressed as ‘my lords of the judiciary’.They were the pinnacle of the city’s judicial apparatus.The bailiff (
schout
), also known as the chief officer (
hoofdofficier
), was by far the most important of them, functioning as both chief constable and public prosecutor. He determined policy, had the power to order house searches, could have suspects taken into custody, and might deal with certain offences himself, imposing fines and thereby keeping the perpetrators out of the courts. He could settle ‘slanderous quarrels, scuffles, and other minor assaults’ that the parties involved laid before him ‘without any form of trial, there and then, in his house’. He could appease, mediate, and even intervene before anyone had been arrested.
7
He sent his officers all over the city to deliver warnings, prohibitions, and injunctions. During trials it was the bailiff who interrogated sus- pects and formulated sentencing demands.The aldermen pronounced verdicts in their role as judges.

The bailiff had twelve men to assist him, referred to as his servants (
schoutsdienaren
or
dienders
), here translated as the bailiff ’s men or, as the English would have called them at the time, constables or officers. He also had five deputy bailiffs (
substituut-schouten
), often simply called deputies. Of these, three were responsible for ‘finding, arresting, and locking up thieves, whores, murderers, street ruffians, burglars, and other villains’within the neighbourhoods to which they were assigned.
8
These three deputy bailiffs had first been appointed in
1613
, when the city was growing rapidly, in response to repeated complaints from citi- zens about the nuisance caused by bawdy-houses.
9
Each deputy had three officers under his personal command and together they formed a small but salaried, centralized, and professional police force. At night the policing of the city was taken over by watchmen, who patrolled their designated areas on the hour, in pairs, now and then swinging a rattle and shouting out the time.
10
From
1672
onwards there were
480
nightwatchmen in Amsterdam.They arrested those caught in the act of committing crimes and took them to their watch-house (the
korte- gaard
, a word derived from the French
Corps de Garde
). There the of- fence was dealt with by the captain of the watch, who decided who would be set free, who could regain his liberty by buying off the charges against him, and who would be detained on remand.The city had four watch-houses: near the stock exchange, near the Zuiderkerk, in the Tuinstraat, and near the Amstelkerk.
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Remanding in custody

As a rule prostitutes and their brothel-keepers, bawds, and panders would end up, whether or not via the watch-house, in the holding cells (
boeien
) in the basement of the Town Hall on Dam Square, where those arrested were held in custody awaiting trial. The cells were a place of drama and emotion, and tensions could reach fever-pitch. It was here that preliminary hearings took place. Prisoners were inter- rogated and confronted with hostile witnesses, who might be called in

from outside but were often convicted felons brought from the Spin House or
R
asp House to accuse detainees to their face of committing specific offences. A convict could have a sentence reduced if the ac- cused subsequently confessed. Such betrayal by former comrades and accomplices often provoked those on remand to swear bloody revenge

and they might even attack their accusers physically there and then. From time to time prostitutes were arrested at the request of their mothers, who would appear as witnesses—a hard-handed means of removing them from their dishonest lives. This too led to emotional scenes.

The holding cells were often overcrowded.The following dialogue, recorded in the Confession Books, between a man (Co) and a woman (Susanna) held on remand for jointly committing a burglary, indicates the atmosphere that prevailed. In the evening they called out to each other from their separate sections:
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susanna: Co, why are you so sad? Give us a song, lad, I’ll venture my life and chattels for you.

co: I cannot sing, I am too sad.

susanna: Do you fear interrogation? I’ve had to gabble away to some four- teen whores today.
11

There is no sign of fourteen whores, gabbling or not, in the Confes- sion Books for mid-July
1721
, but perhaps she meant whores in the general sense of morally reprehensible women. Burglar Susanna clearly did not count herself among them.

Punishments

The law left it up to the courts to decide how to punish prostitutes.‘As regards the punishment of whores, there is no fixed benchmark,’ wrote Alderman (and therefore judge) Marten Beels in his notes of
1762
.
1
2
Yet a clear pattern does emerge from trials, especially from the
4
,
560
deal- ing with charges of prostitution in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Punishments were usually relatively light. For a first offence a ban on ‘appearing at inns and whorehouses or on the cruising lane’ was generally issued. After one or two such warnings the prostitute would be banished from the city for a specified period, usually for three months to a year.There were special posts (
banpalen
), set into the ground about a mile outside Amsterdam, that demarcated the forbidden area.

Banishment, writes lawyer Henricus Calkoen in his prizewinning
Verhandeling over het voorkomen en straffen der misdaaden
(
1780
) (Dis- course on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes), ‘causes nothing else than an exchange of scoundrels for one another, such that no one

has any advantage by it, but on the contrary all are harmed’.
13
As a punishment for prostitution, banishment helped to reinforce prostitu- tion networks. Whether whores or bawds, the banished often seem simply to have plied their trade in another city. In a big place like Am- sterdam it was hard to check whether or not banished individuals stayed away. Those convicted and escorted out through one of the city gates by the bailiff ’s men sometimes came straight back in through anoth- er.
14
‘Infraction of banishment’, if discovered, would lead to further penalties.

The next stage, and the harshest punishment, was imprisonment in the Spin House, usually for three months to a year. Anyone who re- offended could expect a sentence of one or two years, followed by banishment for the same length of time. Only a minority of prostitutes, however, ended up in the Spin House.

Roughly the same punishments were imposed on brothel-keepers as on prostitutes at the time Calkoen was writing. A typical penalty for a first offence was to be ‘bound over to keep a reputable house and not to serve drink after the bell has sounded’. For bawds and whoremasters too, recidivism would lead first to banishment and then to terms of impris- onment to be followed by banishment. Whorehouses were often the target of policies aimed at disrupting the trade, as described in a provin- cial bylaw of
1656
in which the municipal authorities are instructed to ‘disturb and eradicate all brothels, whorehouses, stew-houses (
mothuizen
), brawling-houses (
ravothuizen
), to stamp them out, and never to tolerate a single one of them’.
15
Complaints from neighbours might lead to the order to ‘dislodge’, occasionally within twenty-four hours.
16