The Burgher and the Whore: Prostitution in Early Modern Amsterdam

THE BU
R
GHE
R
AND THE WHO
R
E

Frontispiece to
D’Openhertige Juffrouw, of d’ontdekte geveinsdheid
, ii (Leiden,
c
.1681).

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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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents
‌

List of Illustrations
ix

Introduction
1

Prostitution and whoredom
4

The sources
7

About this edition
14

1. ‘Amsterdam is the Academy of Whoredom’:
   

   Prostitutes, Brothels, and Music Houses
   18
   

   Prostitutes by type
   19
   

   Courtesans and kept women
   22
   

   Women and men as organizers
   24
   

   Whorehouses
   27
   

   Music houses
   29
   

   Urban expansion and the introduction of street-lighting
   34
   

   Music houses and official policy
   36
   

   Violence in music houses
   39
   

   The elite turns its back on the music houses
   40
   

2. ‘Whores and scoundrels always talk of their honour’: Honour, Prostitution, and the Respectable Citizenry
   43
   

   Criteria of honour
   46
   

   Female honour and male honour
   48
   

   Honour and disgrace in linguistic usage
   49
   

   The ‘theft of honour’
   50
   

   The margins of society
   52
   

   Neighbourhood conflicts over prostitution
   56
   

   Acceptance of prostitution?
   62
   

   The Jonkerstraat and the
   R
   idderstraat
   64
   

3. ‘The caterpillar in a cabbage, the canker in the leg’:
   

   Attitudes to Prostitution, Prostitutes, and Women
   67
   

   Abhorrence of ‘silent’ whores
   69
   

   vi contents
   

   From caring mother to punishing father
   70
   

   Syphilis, or the great pox
   74
   

   Women as born whores
   76
   

   Het Amsterdamsch Hoerdom
   and
   D’Openhertige Juffrouw
   79
   

   Changes in the eighteenth century
   81
   

   The female perspective
   86
   

   The male perspective
   88
   

4. ‘The world cannot be governed with a Bible in
   

   the hand’: Prosecution Policies and Their Background
   91
   

   Legislation
   92
   

   The judicial apparatus and legal proceedings
   93
   

   R
   emanding in custody
   94
   

   Punishments
   95
   

   The Spin House as symbol and reality
   97
   

   Prosecution policy in figures
   102
   

   The municipal authorities and the
   R
   eformed Church
   104
   

   Government and parental authority
   107
   

   Some prosecution trends
   111
   

   The reasoning behind the policy
   112
   

5. ‘The devil! I must have money for this’: The Dark
   

   Side of Prosecution Policy
   116
   

   Pecuniary interest
   118
   

   The characters of the bailiff and his men
   120
   

   The police and the people
   122
   

   Buying off charges of adultery
   125
   

   The extortion case of
   1739 128
   

   Deputy Bailiff Schravenwaard and the West Frisian
   

   hay-farmer
   131
   

   Profits and punishments
   133
   

   The case of Deputy Bailiff François Spermondt
   134
   

   Was the Amsterdam police force corrupt?
   137
   

6. ‘Birds of a Feather Flock Together’: Prostitutes,
   

   Clients, and Seafaring
   141
   

   Profile of prostitutes
   142
   

   Work, origins, and migration in context
   144
   

   A harlot’s progress
   147
   

   Amsterdam’s surplus of women
   149
   

   Clients
   152
   

   contents vii
   

   Prostitutes and VOC sailors
   155
   

   Seafaring
   158
   

   Sailors’ wives
   160
   

7. ‘Miraculous tricks, to earn a living by idling’:
   

   Sex for Money and Money for Sex
   166
   

   Terms of employment in prostitution
   169
   

   Debt
   171
   

   Clothes
   176
   

   Finding customers 182
   

   Negotiations
   186
   

   Money for sex
   187
   

   Sex for money
   191
   

   Earnings
   195
   

   In conclusion
   199
   

   Notes
   201
   

   Appendix
   1
   .
   Contemporary Writers on Amsterdam
   

   Music Houses and Prostitution
   232
   

   Appendix
   2
   . Trials for Prostitution in Amsterdam by Decade,
   1650
   –
   1749
   239
   

   Appendix
   3
   . Dutch Currency of the Early Modern Period
   240
   

   Bibliography
   241
   

   Index
   259
   

   This page intentionally left blank
   

   List of Illustrations
   ‌
   

   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
   )
   

   1. Prince Eugene of Savoy in Madame Thérèse’s brothel on the Prinsengracht,
      c
      .
      1720
      . Pen-and-ink drawing by Cornelis Troost (
      1696
      –
      1750
      )
      

   2. The Spin House on the corner of the Oudezijds Achterburgwal
      

      and the Spinhuissteeg. From
      Historische beschryving der stadt Amsterdam
      

      (
      1663
      )
      

   3. Interior of a music house. From
      Le Putanisme d’Amsterdam
      , the French version of
      Het Amsterdamsch Hoerdom
      (
      1681
      )
      

   4. The interior of the music house De Pijl in the Pijlsteeg, late eighteenth century
      

   5. A Dutch Abbess and Her Nymphs
      . Print by Thomas
      R
      owlandson (
      1756
      –
      1827
      ),
      1797
      .
      

   6. Frontispiece to
      Le Putanisme d’Amsterdam
      (
      1681
      )
      

   7. The Proposition
      ,
      1631
      . Painting by Judith Leyster (
      1609
      –
      60
      )
      

   8. The workroom in the Spin House. From Tobias van Domselaer,
      

      Beschryvinge van Amsterdam
      (
      1665
      )
      

   9. The workroom in the Spin House, second half of the seventeenth century. Drawing by Francoys Dancx (? –
      c
      .
      1703
      )
      

   10. The Regents and Regentesses of the Spin House
       , (detail). Painting by Bartholomeus van der Helst (
       1613
       –
       70
       ),
       c
       .
       1650
       

   11. VOC 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

Introduction
‌
‌
‌

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