The Burgher and the Whore: Prostitution in Early Modern Amsterdam (3 page)

less obviously anachronistic, such as ‘client’ for a man who would until relatively recently have been referred to as a ‘customer’, have been less stringently avoided.The terminology surrounding law enforcement is problematic since the word ‘police’ is strongly associated in the British mind with London’s Metropolitan Police, founded in
1829
, and its sister organizations, but the Amsterdam force was relatively modern and professional so the term has been used here.
‌
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Another central concept which is difficult to translate is
eer
, in the first place because it has two English equivalents, ‘honour’ and ‘hon- esty’, which were for a long time used almost interchangeably, as were ‘(dis)honourable’ and ‘(dis)honest’. Ordinary people, however, were more likely to speak of their ‘credit’, ‘good name’, or ‘honesty’ rather than their ‘honour’, the latter term belonging more to the higher so- cial spheres.
20
In this book (
on
)
eerlijk
will be translated as both (dis) honourable and (dis)honest, in spite of the latter term’s modern con- notation of fairness and truth-telling.

The coins of the period and their values are another possible source of confusion.The main unit of coinage was the
gulden
(guilder), made up of twenty
stuivers
(stivers). The
dubbeltje
(which had double the value of a stiver) was more or less equal in value to the English tup- pence and has been translated accordingly. The
schelling
(six stivers), although it had only about half the value of the English shilling, has been translated as such, as it commonly was at the time.
21
The
zesthalf
, at
5
.
5
stivers worth just under a
schelling
, has not been translated, and since the
stuiver
is referred to in contemporary English books and doc- uments as a stiver, the temptation to translate it as a penny has been resisted.A list of coins can be found in Appendix
3
. It is hard to define the value of money, but a male labourer in Holland was paid about a guilder a day, while women earned roughly half that amount. In Am- sterdam a family could just about get by on an annual income of
350
guilders, and a decent two-room apartment could be rented for
100
guilders per annum.

The sources

Prostitution has always caught the public imagination, but the trade itself inevitably remains in the shadows. It has usually been impossible, or at least undesirable and unnecessary,for women living by prostitution

to keep any kind of written account. Most were poor and many were illiterate; they were all involved in an illegal enterprise. Their clients had their own reasons for discretion. As a result we generally see pros- titution through the eyes of others, whether sensationalist writers, moralizing social superiors, or officials. Prostitutes are described in texts as varied as pornography, legal documents, and the records of asylums for fallen women, while histories of prostitution have dealt mainly with legislation, ideas, and attitudes.The image of prostitution is generally well documented, the reality a good deal less so.

The sources available on the subject of prostitution in early modern Amsterdam are remarkably numerous and diverse, and they touch upon both image and reality. After the Alteration (
Alteratie
) of
1578
, when Amsterdam at last transferred its loyalty from the Catholic to the Protestant camp to join the Dutch
R
evolt against Spanish rule, prosti- tution was strictly forbidden and those involved actively prosecuted. The judicial archives reflect this. Criminalization and prosecution are documented in the Confession Books of the Prisoners (
Confessieboeken der gevangenen
), where the interrogations that took place in court were

recorded. All the Confession Books for the period up until
1811
, when the system changed, have survived; I have studied all those for the period
2
February
1650
to
1
February
1750
. In that hundred-year span there were
8
,
099
trials for prostitution, amounting to a fifth of all criminal proceedings (see Appendix
2
). I have also drawn extensively

on other judicial archives held in Amsterdam, as well as the notarial archives and the records of the Amsterdam
R
eformed Church.

The Confession Books from
1650
to
1750
have been my main ar-

chival source; they are of great value both quantitively and qualita- tively, and they offer a wealth of detail about the prostitution trade and its policing. The prostitutes, bawds, and brothel-keepers appear- ing before the bench were asked to state their names, ages, places of birth, and professions, thereby providing data for their collective biog- raphy. Furthermore, the many digressions, details, and stories make the Confession Books a veritable treasure trove of material.With the passage of time there is a shift in the type of information to be found. Between
1650
and
1699 5
,
803
trials were recorded and many of the entries are short, whereas far lengthier interrogations are set down in the records of the
2
,
296
trials held between
1700
and
1749
. The amount of paper inscribed by the clerk is roughly the same for the two half-centuries.

For the sake of comparison and to garner additional information I have researched prostitution in The Hague in the second half of the eighteenth century. One part of The Hague fell under a separate juris- diction, that of the Court of Holland (Hof van Holland), the highest court and the court of appeal for the province of Holland and West Frisia.This comprised the area around the court buildings, which was known for its many prostitutes.The archives of the Court of Holland contain
180
files dealing with prostitution for the years
1745
–
95
, and since the high court devoted a great deal of time and attention to each case and called up information from elsewhere, even from other coun- tries, they are immensely valuable.The women’s life stories are covered in more detail than in the Amsterdam Confession Books and most of them appear to have lived in Amsterdam at some point, usually as pros- titutes.Towards the end of the century many of their clients were ar- rested and interrogated as well, which did not happen in Amsterdam. Amsterdam was regarded as the ultimate city of whores by the Dutch as well as by foreigners, which brings us to a second type of source: fiction. The popular literature of the period is replete with whores and brothels.There are hundreds of prose works, farces, song- books, and other printed texts in which sexual misconduct, whoring, and prostitution figure prominently. Most are set in Amsterdam.
22
In the period between
1680
and
1710
especially, a torrent of works of a scabrous nature appeared, including translations of foreign pornogra- phy, treatises on venereal diseases, and semi-pornographic picaresque novels. Most were published by the same handful of Amsterdam pub-

lishers, such as the notorious Timotheus van Hoorn.

For my purposes the most important contemporary text on Amster- dam prostitution is
Het Amsterdamsch Hoerdom
(Amsterdam Whore- dom). It was published in Amsterdam in
1681
and reprinted at least nine times, the last known edition being dated
1797
.A French version entitled
Le Putanisme d’Amsterdam
appeared in the same year, and a German translation called
Das Amsterdamer Huren-Leben
was published in Leiden in
1754
.There must have been very many copies in circula- tion, given the number of reprints, translations, and references in other works, although few have survived.

In
Het Amsterdamsch Hoerdom
a man from
R
otterdam, on his way to Amsterdam by public barge, hears two men talking excitedly about the

new girls who are expected to appear that evening in a particular Amsterdam music house. Intrigued, he decides to take a look for

himself as soon as possible. He hastens to finish his day’s business, but is then so tired that he falls asleep.The devil appears to him in a dream and takes him on a guided tour of the music houses and brothels, from the fashionable music halls at the head of the Zeedijk to the miserable dives near the
R
egulierstoren. Both characters are invisible, so they can listen at will and enter wherever they choose (Plate
3
). The guide is able to answer all the questions put to him, and they witness scandal-

ous deeds and deceptions so appalling that even the devil proclaims himself horrified.When the protagonist wakes up, he declares himself completely cured of his desire to see the whores of Amsterdam.

The descriptions in the book are wonderfully animated and de- tailed, suggesting first-hand observation.The anonymous author (who remains unidentified) has an accurate knowledge of the law and its policing, including their historical background; the organizational structures and financial transactions depicted are roughly consistent with accounts given in court in the same period.
Het Amsterdamsch Hoerdom
is unquestionably an invaluable, if supplementary, source on the history of prostitution in Amsterdam.

Also of great interest is a fictional autobiography of a fashionable and successful Amsterdam prostitute, entitled
D’Openhertige Juffrouw, of d’ontdekte geveinsdheid
(vol. i,
1680
; vol. ii,
c
.
1681
) (The Outspoken Damsel, or Hypocrisy Unmasked).
23
Witty and well written, it pro- vides a great deal of information that concurs with the archival sources. It was an extremely popular book, frequently reprinted and translated into both French (
La Damoyselle a cœur ouvert
,
1683
) and German (one translation appearing in
1689
as
Die offenhertzige Jungfrau, oder Entdeckte Scheinheiligkeit deß Frauenzimmers
and a second, a year later, as
Die ver- blendende Jungfrau, Oder Arglistigkeit deß Frauenzimmers
). An English- language adaptation, entitled
The London Jilt: or, the Politick Whore
, was published in
1683
, with the names of characters and places anglicized and other details adjusted. Amsterdam is transformed into London; the deputy-bailiff becomes ‘an officer in the spiritual court’, and instead of ‘leaning over half-doors’, the prostitutes are ‘standing in their door- ways’, to name just a few examples.The adaptation is so well done that
The London Jilt
was and still is taken to be an original English work, a forerunner to Daniel Defoe’s
Moll Flanders
(
1722
) and John Cleland’s
Memoirs of a Lady of Pleasure
(
Fanny Hill
) of
1748
.

D’Openhertige Juffrouw
belongs to the popular genre of picaresque novels in which the narrator tells the story of his or her life, beginning

in childhood, with tales of survival against the odds through ingenuity and by trusting to luck. Sexual adventures belong in this genre. Other examples include
De Amsterdamsche lichtmis, of zoldaat van fortuin
(The Amsterdam Libertine, or Soldier of Fortune) of about
1731
and
De ongelukkige levensbeschryving van een Amsterdammer, zynde een beknopt ver- haal zyner ongelukken
(The Unhappy Biography of an Amsterdammer, Being a Concise Account of his Misadventures), published in
1775
.The latter tells many vivid stories about life at the margins of Amsterdam society and is probably partly the autobiography of Harmanus Koning, a publisher as well as a writer of the Grub Street kind.

Eighteenth-century works describing Amsterdam prostitutes and prostitution include
Den opkomst en val van een koffihuys nichtje
(
1727
) (The
R
ise and Fall of a Coffee-House Niece), in which a frivolous girl starts out as a waitress in her uncle’s coffee house, becomes a whore and then a prostitute, and ends up in the gutter. The writer was Jacob CampoWeyerman, who belonged to Amsterdam’s literary underground

and was well acquainted with the city’s brothels.
24
In the
Boereverhaal van geplukte Gys
(
c
.
1750
), (whose full title translates as Farmers’ Story of Fleeced Gys, as Told to Sly Jaap, on Account of his Night Out in Am- sterdam, or the Conversation Between the Two of Them, Describing the Current Music Houses, Women of Pleasure and their Entourage, Transposed into
R
hyme by a Lover of Poetry), farmer Gys tells farmer Jaap, in the dialect of the countryside north of Amsterdam, how he was relieved of both his money and his health by whores and bawds. By the end, however, Gys has clearly had a good time.
25
Gys has a great many

questions, whereas Jaap knows all the answers, an established format also found in in
De Amsteldamsche speelhuizen
(
1793
) (The Amsterdam Music Houses), which takes the form of a dialogue between an inquisitive in- nocent and his more experienced friend or guide.

Attempts to discover the authors and publishing history of such books lead us into a veritable labyrinth.The complexities are beyond the scope of this book, but the pitfalls are many, and casualties have occurred.
Het Amsterdamsch Hoerdom
is one example. A pirated version exists, much abridged and with additional material that is far more pornographic than anything to be found in the original; the illustra- tions are crude copies. It was published by Jan Pottenbol of The Hague in
1694
and the only extant copy is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, where Simon Schama made extensive use of it in writing
The Embar- rassment of
R
iches
.
26
Another example is
The London Jilt
, which has lately