The Sexual History of London (4 page)

There is no evidence of organized prostitution in Britain before the Romans, but human nature alone suggests that every settlement must have had its share of good-time girls. What does emerge is that Celtic women seemed to have had a far greater degree of sexual equality than their Roman counterparts, as this exchange from
AD
151 between the Empress Julia Domna and the wife of the Caledonian chieftain Argentocoxus indicates. Julia, who had something of a reputation as a flirt, was the consort of Emperor Septimus Severus, who spent some time in Britain. Apparently she teased Argentocoxus' wife about the Scottish habit of sharing their women. The chieftainess retorted: ‘We have intercourse openly with the best of our men; while you allow yourselves to be seduced in private by anyone including the worst of men!'
³⁹

The Britons did not treat their women as possessions or inferiors, but as equals. The Roman historian Strabo observed that the women ‘fought alongside their menfolk, and as bravely'.
⁴⁰
The Romans could not have produced a Boudicca, for they would never have taken orders from a woman. Sadly, however, the British resistance was eventually broken, and these brave, free-spirited women reduced to slavery and the brothels.

We began this chapter by reflecting on the unhappy fate of the slaves deposited at Queenhithe. This was just the start. During the 400 years of Roman occupation, Londinium became a dockside city, with ocean-going merchant ships and warships arriving in town, bearing their parties of sailors anxious for shore leave. This was another explanation for the development of brothels. According to ancient superstition, women, whores or otherwise, were not permitted on board ship: they were regarded as unlucky and any unfortunate woman who found herself on board would have been thrown overboard to drown.

Business flourished until
AD
409 when the legions were recalled to Rome by Emperor Honorius, and the Britons were left to the tender mercies of the raiding Saxons. Thousands of Britons chose to leave their homeland with the Romans, and those who remained spent the next forty years unsuccessfully attempting to stem the Saxon tide. Eventually, in 457, the Roman-British forces were overwhelmed at the battle of Crayford, and Southwark and then Londinium fell to the Saxons.

Following the departure of the Romans, the loss of an affluent leisured class had led to the collapse of the sex trade, at least in the form in which it had previously operated. As Londinium ceased to function like a Roman city and disintegrated into a series of settlements along the banks of the Thames, the bath houses and the pleasure domes and their urbane professional clients became things of the past; and the whores were forced to change their modus operandi.

Little is known of what became of the prostitutes of this period. It is known, however, that brothels as such did not exist in Northern Europe. Instead, each Saxon village had its local prostitute, who lived slightly apart from the main settlement. The word ‘whore' derives from
hore
or
hure
or
hore-cwen
, a filthy woman, and by association
hore-hus
is a whorehouse or brothel.
⁴¹

The solitary whore's clientele consisted of local older men, horny youngsters, husbands and the occasional stranger. She could usually expect to live in peace and provide a service to the community, although penalties, when the elders chose to impose them, were severe: the Visigoths ruled that whores must be publicly whipped and their noses split open, whilst one early Aryan form of Christianity practised among the German tribes saw promiscuous girls and women put to death.
⁴²
If this seems grim, it is worth recalling that conditions for ‘respectable' women were little better: regarded as the property of their husbands and fathers, they were traded like horses and sold into wedlock for financial or political gain (
wed
means payment or pledge, later symbolized by a ring).

Ironically, despite the deeply misogynistic attitudes of the Church, it was the arrival of Christianity on these shores which provided a boost for women, and whores in particular. In one respect, the Augustinian form of Christianity as practised in London offered salvation for women; no longer merely seen as chattels to be bought and sold, they achieved a certain status. A great deal of the early converts to Christianity were women, and particularly prostitutes, who were impressed by the fact that the original ‘scarlet woman' of the Christian story, Mary Magdalene, played such an important role in Christ's life. In her capacity as a reformed prostitute who became one of his greatest followers, Magdalene was an impressive role model.

By 670 Christianity had been imposed throughout the land, and by 850 the Bishop of Winchester (later known as St Swithin) had established the nunnery of St Mary Overie. This establishment was founded on the same spot as the Roman garrison where the first of London's prostitutes had serviced the Roman army. Built in Southwark, it would become one of the most notorious brothels in London, and the ‘nuns' who dwelt there would become known as ‘the Winchester Geese'. From servicing their colonial masters, the prostitutes of London were now, to all intents and purposes, owned by the Church.

After a period of relative inactivity, prostitution in medieval London flourished once again, as it would continue to do over the following centuries, despite the depredations of the Norman Conquest, the Crusades and the Black Death, and despite the best efforts of Church and state to control it.

The booming sex trade indicated that Londoners were alive and kicking, whatever the horrors and upheavals that confronted them. And the allure of London's ladies of the night sometimes proved so strong that their appeal was enough to prevent an attempted coup. When Earl Godwin, who had raised an army against King Edward the Confessor, was anchored off Bankside in 1052, it was noted that his band of loyal supporters diminished the longer it stayed, because they could not resist sneaking off to visit the ladies of the Bankside.
¹

Meanwhile, conditions in the sex trade had improved for the girls at the top of their profession. Overseas clients presented them with new clothes and jewellery, instructed them in manners and foreign tongues; the premises were built of stone, instead of mud and thatch. The girls enjoyed better working conditions than their predecessors in Roman times. Much of this was courtesy of the Church, which received a rich income stream from the properties it leased out to pimps and bawds. In addition to St Mary Overie, the Bishop of Winchester owned other properties in Chancery Lane and Fetter Lane.
²
England's royal family also dabbled in this form of investment: William the Conqueror derived an income from a series of brothels in Rouen, a fact which would not have occasioned comment during his lifetime.
³

Whilst a modern reader may struggle to reconcile the Church's attitude towards prostitution with its avowed injunction to chastity, the ecclesiastical authorities had no such reservations. Despite the official line about celibacy, the Church turned a blind eye. Taking to heart the comment of Saint Augustine that ‘Suppress prostitution, and capricious lusts will overthrow society,'
⁴
the Church operated on the principle that prostitution fell into the category of ‘necessary evils'. St Thomas Aquinas himself compared prostitution ‘like unto a cesspool in the palace; take away the cesspool and the palace becomes an unclean evil-smelling place'.
⁵
The Church then displayed a further level of hypocrisy by excommunicating any prostitutes who plied their trade while taking a share of the profits.

The Church was a calling to which resorted many who were incapable of making a living any other way, and there is a rich seam of anecdotal literature concerning the failings of the priesthood. Despite their frequent injunctions to others to turn away from sin, the men of God proved incapable of controlling their own sexual urges and their sexual excesses were legendary. The Dutch humanist Erasmus (1466–1536) complained that there were many monasteries where there was no discipline and which were worse than brothels, where a monk might be drunk all day long, go with a prostitute openly, waste the Church's money on vicious pleasures and be a quack and a charlatan, and yet still be considered an excellent brother and fit for promotion to the role of abbot.
⁶
Many of the great cathedrals featured sculptures lampooning the sexual antics of the clergy. According to the Victorian historian of prostitution, Sanger, ‘in one place a monk was represented in carnal connection with a female devotee. In others were seen an abbot engaged with nuns, a naked nun worried by monkeys, youthful penitents undergoing flagellation at the hands of their confessor, and lady abbesses offering hospitality to well-proportioned strangers!'
⁷

This outrageous behaviour went all the way to the top. At the Vatican, prostitutes lived in apartments owned by the Church and openly plied their trade. Pope Alexander VI, father of the infamous Cesare Borgia, was fond of holding family gatherings at the papal palace. On one occasion, fifty whores were hired to dance with servants and guests alike:

From this and other accounts it can safely be deduced that the ancient Roman tradition of sexual excess had taken root and was thriving within the medieval Vatican. Given these examples, it is scarcely surprising that the populace had low expectations of their clergy. One writer, Guerard, related an anecdote from around 1065, concerning a kindly abbot who had rescued a young servant girl from the lewd attentions of a monk and offered her a bed for the night at his abbey. He was astonished to wake up the next morning and find the girl in his own bed. She had assumed that he had rescued her from the monk only because he wanted her for himself.
⁹

Even the Crusades presented an occasion for sin. This series of holy wars fought between Christians and Muslims in Palestine, which began in 1097, saw thousands of women accompany the armies to the Holy Land, some as camp-followers attached to one particular man, some as cooks, cleaners and nurses, and many as prostitutes. Some women specialized in servicing the pilgrims bound for Jerusalem, while female pilgrims supported themselves by selling their favours along the way; some even abandoned a life of piety in favour of the oldest profession. English nuns were particularly prone to this change of career.
¹⁰

Ecclesiastical mischief remained a standing joke throughout the medieval period. Back in London, the poet Geoffrey Chaucer exploited the yawning chasm between public piety and private misbehaviour to great comic effect in his
Canterbury Tales
verse sequence (
c
. 1386). These recognizable comic types reflect the popular perception of churchmen as a venal set, and it seems only appropriate that they set off on their pilgrimage from the Tabard Tavern in Southwark, already well established as a centre of low life.

Chaucer's motley crew includes several stereotypes, among them a debonair monk, a pleasure-loving friar and a couple of depraved Church executives. The Monk, for instance, far from being buried away in a cloister or doing good works, is depicted as a burly, athletic man with a bald, shining head, grey, protuberant eyes and something of the thug about him.
¹¹
His main passion is hunting, animals and women, as his golden pin in the shape of a love knot indicates, and he is too busy chasing the birds, of the feathered and unfeathered variety, to drive himself mad studying theology.

The Friar, whom we meet next, is equally sophisticated: no hair shirts for him. Instead, he is a talented musician, a harpist and singer with a lisping voice, and better acquainted with the taverns of the towns he visits than the beggars and lepers who should be his natural constituents.
¹²
The Summoner and the Pardoner, meanwhile, constitute a repellent couple. The Summoner's job was to cite delinquents who appeared before the ecclesiastical court. Summoners had a reputation for corruption and abuse, even by the standards of the medieval Church, and this one is presented as a particularly vile specimen. His face is disfigured by leprosy, with scabby eyebrows and patchy beard, he is as lecherous as a sparrow (these birds were considered particularly lewd) and loose in his morals, willing to lend other men his concubines for up to a year without complaint, while he privately went after a ‘finch' of his own, to use yet another analogy of birds and women.

Although the Summoner is nothing if not an equal opportunities lecher, Chaucer also insinuates that he fancies the Pardoner, whose task is to sell papal indulgences, many of which are fake. The Pardoner is effeminate, with long, lank yellow hair and no beard. ‘I trow he were a gelding, or a mare,' Chaucer speculates, and mentions his high, sweet voice and talents as a singer, suggesting that he has been castrated, making him all the more attractive to the Summoner, who sings along with him, supplying the bassline or ‘burden'. At this point Chaucer takes the opportunity to make a really filthy double entendre as he watches the two of them together. The Summoner, according to Chaucer, looks at the Pardoner and ‘bears to him a stiff burden'.
¹³

Convents, which should have operated as a sanctuary offering women a life of contemplation and prayer, were equally depraved. As the role of nunneries was chiefly charitable, rather than devotional, many of the inmates clung to the sophisticated manners they had learned out in the world, and no great effort was made to control their sexuality.

Chaucer's nun is a good example. Madame Eglentyne, or the Prioress, models herself on the sophisticated French court (although her French is strictly East End, as spoken at Stratford at Bowe, and she is characterized by her soft red lips, beautiful clothes and the observation that she is certainly not underdeveloped.
¹⁴
There is a mysterious man in her life, signified by the little gold brooch she wears, decorated with a crowned ‘A' and inscribed with the Latin motto ‘
Amor vincit onmnia –
Love conquers all'. She has fancy table manners, keeps pet dogs and affects a ladylike sensibility, crying at the sight of a mouse in a trap and eating and drinking with great delicacy. Madame Eglentyne emerges as extremely refined when compared with real-life counterparts such as the Mother Superior at Amesbury, Wiltshire, during the twelfth century, who was so lewd that her nuns were quick to follow her example. The doors stood open day and night, and the building was more like a brothel than a convent.
¹⁵

From time to time, the Church attempted to put its house in order and demanded that its clergy remain celibate. Hitherto, this requirement of clerical life had not been strictly enforced and priests had openly married or kept mistresses known as
focarii
, or ‘hearth girls'. As the Church attempted to enforce celibacy, former wives and lovers were left with no choice but to enter the convents and swell the ranks of the depraved nuns, or to become wandering whores.
¹⁶

The Bankside brothels became known in colloquial terms as ‘the stews', since they were located near the ponds which provided London's supply of fresh fish. In 1161 King Henry II imposed his ‘Ordinance for the governance of the stews' which in effect guaranteed the Bishop of Winchester's right to exploit the brothels of Southwark for the next 400 years: as a result, many of London's most attractive churches were actually built on the proceeds of prostitution. But Henry's ordinance had other implications for London's working girls. At a time when many European cities were attempting to banish prostitution, this ordinance represented an attempt to control the sex trade by creating an official red-light district in Southwark, the area that had been associated with prostitution ‘time out of mind'. Henry wanted to abolish the role of the madam and replace her with a male brothel keeper or ‘stewholder'. As Roberts says, this ordinance was both ‘prohibitive and protective',
¹⁷
as it laid down the rights of whores to follow their chosen profession but also curtailed their freedom of movement. The historian John Stow listed some of these rules:

The whores were allowed to sit still in their doorway, but they were banned from importuning, and were not permitted to advertise themselves with gestures or calls, or to seize men by the gown or harness. Swearing, grimacing and throwing stones at passers-by were also discouraged, and the penalty for such activities consisted of three days and nights in jail and a fine of six shillings and eight-pence. The whores also had to leave the brothel during parliamentary sittings and Privy Council meetings, presumably so that politicians were compelled to attend them rather than seek consolation in the arms of loose women.

Further rules stated that the bailiff was to visit the house once a week and ensure that the whores were healthy and that none of them wanted to leave. And the ‘stewholder' himself had to abide by certain rules: for instance, he was forbidden to keep a boat, to prevent him from rowing potential clients across the river.
¹⁹
In an effort to curtail prostitution, citizens were banned from rowing across the Thames to Bankside after sundown, but this measure was ineffectual; resourceful men found a means of getting across, and other brothels inevitably sprang up on the north bank of the river. When King John was instrumental in building the new stone London Bridge in 1209, the law became impossible to enforce and the bridge became a royal road to the whorehouse.