Who invented prostitution

On the background of the painting you can get a glimpse of the daily affairs of this Spin house. One of the women gets beaten with a shoe. Apparently physical punishment was seen as an integral part of reeducation of the women. Amsterdam, 17th-century. A woman gets beaten with a shoe as punishment. Already in the 17th century women were brought to Amsterdam, a booming town, from elsewhere, mainly Flemish Brabant, the region just above Brussels.

So there was women trafficking, but many women in Amsterdam did their trade voluntarily and came from the city itself. A lot of money was easily made this way. Around the city government started to seriously clamp down on the organizers behind prostitution. From they also started with flogging in public.

Fines were also increased and the expensive clothing of the prostitutes, often owned by the madams, were confiscated. Around prostitution went underground, a number of large playhouses disappeared and the small whorehouses, where a madam and one or two prostitutes lived, made far less explicit promotion.

The women no longer flaunted themselves in Front of the door of whorehouses. In an alley called Hasselaarsteeg [Hasselaar Alley], located at yards from the harbor, brothels were left to their own devices, because sailors had to sleep somewhere and many of time they did that just there, in the houses of public women.

The City of Amsterdam only withdrew the license of a public woman after a multitude of complaints about her, as is stated in a Police report from about a woman in the Handboogstraat.

With the French occupation of The Netherlands in the ban on prostitution was lifted. Starting from prostitution was allowed, under the condition that the women and brothel owners registered with the police. The reason for this practice originates from the Napoleonic wars. Soldiers and prostitutes often spent time together. During the Napoleonic wars there was a big increase in venereal disease, with negative consequences for the fighting strength of the army.

It was hoped that the registration and checkups, including medical checkups, would decrease the number of venereal cases. The French government in The Netherlands ended the ban on prostitution and with the implementation of code penal in only prostitution with minors was made illegal. This meant the separation between the law and morals.

Even more special is the Law-on-the-Cities of , that recognised both brothels and prostitutes as legal! After the French left in prostitution remained legal. In many cities, especially garrisoned ones, prostitution was regulated. Amsterdam was an exception. Even though prostitution was viewed as condemnable the local authorities would not interfere with the sector.

Still the city of Amsterdam provided medical checkups for prostitutes. In there were 68 legalised houses of prostitution, with public women. People having doubts, can address these doubts to Police stations [follows the address]. In England movements for abolition of the trade started in , followed up in Amsterdam by The Midsummer night Association in The debate about prostitution reignited.

Hundreds of books and pamphlets were written by proponents — fighting with statistics — defending public health and opponents, who considered the checkups of prostitutes a license for visiting brothels. The proponents for ending prostitution called themselves abolitionists. They chose this name because of its meaning in the fight against abolishing slavery globally. They started protesting right in front of a brothel, only to give rise to mockery [first], insults [after] and outright fights and up risings [in the end], meaning that this attempt to deal with the oldest profession on earth was doomed to fail.

Cartoon in the Amsterdamsche Courant. Violation of this new City-rule was punished with shut down by the Fornication Police, who went to the place in full pomp and circumstance! New laws were introduced, repression became firmer. Provocative Advertisement of brothel Maison Weinthal circa Brothel Maison Weinthal was shut down by the Amsterdam authorities on June 20th, Now local brothel-keepers went into appeal with the courts, putting forward that the local City-laws were in contradiction to National laws.

Eventually the Supreme Court in the Netherlands held that the Amsterdam City law did not contravene any higher body of law and the appeals were thereby dismissed. In , the Liquor Law went into force. This was to target females in bars trying to get the male visitors to drink beer, wine and jenever the dutch version of gin.

These women are called animation girls, since they try to animate you to drink and to pay the bill for both of you. They were prositutes too. It was forbidden to have female staff in a bar without a specific license from the City, mentioning the women and her address in question on paper.

As a result of the Sanitary Convention of drafted in Brussels, to which all civilised nations adhered, sailors of all nationalities can have free treatment of genital diseases. The invention by Alexander Fleming of a new drug: Penicillin, made treatment of venereal diseases possible. Quite a relief! Amsterdam, Antoniesbreestraat, — The bowed bed of a prostitute. In , Amsterdam had working prostitutes in town. They worked on the streets, in houses or in cafes.

Amsterdam, Red Light District, Oudekerksplein Photographer: C. Rob Oudkerk , a former Dutch politician and alderman of Amsterdam in the nineties, was dismissed when, in a loose mood at a bar, he told female journalist Heleen van Royen that he frequented prostitutes at an Amsterdam industrial site.

Rob Oudkerk, at the moment of publication in the year , was an MP and was forced to resign and disappear from the national political theatre. Nowadays, prostitution is accepted, except by conservative and religious political parties, like CDA or CU. In , the City of Amsterdam adopted a policy called — the zip code of the Red Light District. It encompasses among other things, buying real estate [from wrongdoers] and installing regular shops in the real estate.

Like a game cafe, fashion shops, chocolate shops, art galleries and so on. That policy has been successful. But because of this policy, the number of brothel windows is decreasing.

This means less working space for the prostitutes. On April 9th, there was this big protest in Amsterdam, where sex workers protested against the closing of the brothels. Anthropologists suggest prostitution did not actually seem to exist at all in what were once called primitive societies.

There was no sex for sale among the Aborigines of Australia before the white man arrived. Nor, apparently, were there brothels in societies ranging from the ancient Cymri people in Wales to recently discovered tribes in the jungles of Burma. Prostitution seems to be something to do with what we call civilisation.

The first recorded instances of women selling themselves for sex seem to be not in brothels but in temples. In Sumaria, Babylonia and among the Phoenicians, prostitutes were those who had sex, not for gain, but as a religious ritual. Sex in the temple was supposed to confer special blessings on men and women alike.

But that was very different to just doing it for money. There's plenty of that in the Bible, though prostitutes in the Jewish scriptures seemed to ply their trade from home, such as Rahab, the prostitute in Jericho who aided the spies of Joshua and identified her house with a scarlet rope - the origin, some say, of the "red light" though that may, more prosaically, come from the red lanterns carried by railroad workers left outside brothels while they were inside.

The first brothels proper seem to have been in ancient Egypt. Some historians suggest prostitution was not common until the influence of Greek and Mesopotamian travellers took hold. But, in the times of the later Pharaohs, dancing women and musicians were used to recruit men into brothels. Herodotus said a Greek prostitute called Rhopopis was so successful in Egypt she built a pyramid from her takings.

But certainly it was the Greeks who first put the brothel on an official footing. The celebrated Athenian lawmaker and lyric poet Solon founded state brothels and taxed prostitutes on their earnings in the 5th century BC. They were staffed by hetaerae companions who ranged from slaves and other lowclass women to those of the upper ranks. The cost of sex was one obole, a sixth of a drachma and the equivalent of an ordinary worker's day salary. For that you got intercourse but nothing oral, which Greek women had a distaste for, although hetaerae were commonly beaten for refusing.

The Romans were keen on sex. There can be few languages richer than Latin in the pornographic, with dozens of terms for prostitutes and different sexual acts. Waitresses in taverns usually sold sexual services. Prostitutes set themselves up at the circus, under the arches fornices - hence fornication. Official prostitutes were registered by the police and their activities were regulated. Rent from a brothel was a legitimate source of income for a respectable man. Not all brothels were the same.

Those in the Second District of the City were very dirty but the brothels of the Peace ward, were sumptuously fitted. Hairdressers stood by to repair the ravages of amorous combats. Aquarioli, or water boys, waited by the door with bidets for ablution. The superior prostitutes had immense influence on Roman fashions in hair, dress and jewellery. However, their physical presentation of themselves was not the only thing they shared. Surprisingly, many prostitutes were close and formed strong ties with one another.

It was not uncommon for these women to lend a helping hand to another during times of need — if one of them needed go to the doctor or be bailed out of jail, another would pull the money together in order to help the other out. Nevertheless, despite this level of camaraderie, prostitutes still fought over territories, costumes and belongings.

Fights and arguments between prostitutes were not uncommon especially between older and younger prostitutes when the latter were considered rising competition Walkowitz, As can be seen, despite the variation in practices and activities among prostitutes, the uniformity in their social interactions helped to group them together under an umbrella of commonality that prevailed upon them in situations of distress.

During the Victorian Age, reforms geared toward prostitution gained momentum. The largest concern, and the issue that took precedence over many others, concerned the prevalence of venereal disease among prostitutes. Although the suffering of prostitutes was not a particular concern of the government, the contagiousness of these diseases was creating enough worry to elicit a response from them as the British military was found to be the largest victim of this problem.

It was believed by the government that the declining health and effectiveness of the military was a direct result of prostitutes with venereal diseases mingling with the armed forces, and so in response to these concerns, Parliament passed The Contagious Diseases Acts of , and As a result of these acts, the British government was given the right to stop and detain any woman identified as a prostitute and force her submission to an examination with the intent of identifying whether the woman in question suffered from a venereal disease.

If during the examination, a venereal disease was identified by the examiner, the prostitute would then be detained in a hospital for a specified amount time so that the disease could be handled and cured if possible McHugh, Although the goal of these acts was supported by many, there were others who believed that the forced examination of women violated basic human rights. Those who fought hardest against these acts tended to be moralists and feminists.

Their strongest objection to the acts stemmed from the unquestionable right of an official to stop any woman suspected of infection. As a result of this right, there were many women who, not suffering from venereal disease, were forced to submit to a humiliating and degrading experience for no reason.

Many of these problems arose because in the eyes of the law officials detaining women, many working-class women were not distinguishable from prostitutes and were therefore equally abused by the process.

It was cases such as these that truly motivated the subsequent repeal movements. The group condemned the acts and fought hard for a repeal against them alongside social activists, who inspired by these women, rallied together to speak out against the acts.

Their fight lasted for 17 years, and in , their long-awaited repeal was finally granted The Contagious Diseases Act. Prostitution during the Victorian age gained an unprecedented amount of attention from both British society and their government. Although issues of prostitution were, and are often still, seen in black and white, there were many cases where prostitution was either a supplementary activity or the only available avenue of employment.

It was an unsavory profession, and, unfortunately, it was often considered a necessary evil. Since it was so pervasive in society, it is not surprising that we find literary works dealing with the issue of prostitution. Below are two poems depicting aspects of prostitution in Victorian life.