Harbours, Hookers, Heroines, and Women in Masquerade
- Hans Faber
- Mar 20, 2022
- 81 min read
Updated: Aug 3
Dockyards, quays, terminals, warehouses, wharves, anchorages, lighthouses, and beacons. Craftsmen, shipping companies, customs offices, pilot services, and other port authorities. Fish auctions, boarding houses, lodgings, packing sheds—you name it. Seaports exist to meet the needs of everything that arrives from the sea or sets out to it. But beyond commerce, ports have traditionally also responded to another, persistent demand: sex. Since the Frisia Coast Trail tells the story of a coastal strip along the southern North Sea, the age-old pairing of sailors and prostitutes must be part of it too. A tale long—and still too often—wrapped in false romance and clichés. In this blog post, we explore the late medieval and early modern periods, shedding light on the harsh realities and survival strategies of the women of this coast.
1. Introduction
This long read is not just about sailors and prostitutes. It is about how the lives of women were shaped by the sea—also known as the Devil’s Highway—and by maritime trade. As we will see, it was women who initially dominated the prostitution business, both as sex workers and as whoremasters. Only later did men begin to interfere and, over time, largely take over the management of brothels. But this blog post is also about how the wives of sailors and other seafarers had to survive while their husbands were away at the big blue—sometimes for years on end—with a grim two-thirds chance that they would not return at all (Dekker & Van de Pol 1989). In general, lower-class women were left to fend for themselves, while respectable and honourable jobs were reserved for men. In other words: doubly disadvantaged.
A largely overlooked phenomenon in the early modern history of Northwest Europe is travesty: women dressing in trousers, posing as men, and enlisting as soldiers in the army or navy, or as sailors in the service of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company, or VOC). Some managed to maintain their disguise for years, going unrecognized and gaining a rare opportunity to earn a living and survive. Becoming a prostitute was another route to survival—though one considered dishonourable.
With many men at sea and a high number of widows, the male-to-female ratio in early modern Amsterdam was around 45 to 55 percent—especially in the lower-class and working-class districts. In other words, for every four men, there were five women. Moreover, between a third and a half of all criminal acts in the city were committed by women. Most of the prostitutes and whore madams who appeared before the court were married to sailors (De Wit 2010). Foreign visitors often noted that Amsterdam’s women were not just assertive—they ruled the streets. During the first half of the sixteenth century, Frisians were also strongly represented in the city’s criminal records. This is largely due to the fact that more Frisians than people from any other province emigrated to Amsterdam during that period (Thuijs 2020).
Further down in this blog post, we will elaborate on the topics just mentioned. We are even pleased, if we may say so, to meet the Devil himself and join him on a nightly city tour through the brothels, seedy inns, and shadowy taverns of late seventeenth-century Amsterdam. Together with the Devil, we will encounter two drunken Frisian skippers, each with a juffertje—a 'little young lady', that is, a whore—perched on his knee.
Those male readers who believe prostitution does not concern them should consider this: the average customer of a prostitute closely resembles Average Joe (Altink 1983). They come from all walks of life and social backgrounds. In the Netherlands today, roughly 300,000 men visit a whore several times a year, and one in five men has made use of a prostitute’s services at some point in his life. Around 70 to 80 percent of these clients have a partner (Ronde 2010).
The bland, nondescript term John—slang for a man who visits prostitutes—fits the reality quite well: he might just be the neighbour, the brother-in-law, or even the brother, without the “in-law” part. No, this is not to say that they are. But now that the odds are known, the reader can do the math—how many Johns are likely to be found on one’s own street, in one’s own social circle, or even within the supposedly safe confines of one’s own happy, respectable family? One in five, remember.
If the reader is starting to sense that this blog post might hit too close to home, now would be a good moment to stop reading and look away.
We could have opened this long read in Shanghai—once nicknamed 'the brothel of Asia', with its infamous madams known as White Ants. The city’s reputation was so notorious that 'to Shanghai someone' became a phrase for forcing a person into something against their will. Or we might have begun in Amsterdam, dubbed 'the whore on the IJ'—the IJ being a former river and sea bay—where anything was available, as long as you could pay. As early as the sixteenth century, the city’s notoriety had spread so far that an inn in the Strandgade harbour district of Copenhagen was named after it, known as a place of Svir, Dobbel og løse Kvindfolk—drink, gambling, and loose women—frequented, unsurprisingly, by Dutch sailors (Christensen 2021). We might also have started in San Francisco’s infamous Barbary Coast, where gold miners, bums, and drifters squandered their fortunes on Chinese, French, and Mexican prostitutes along Pacific Street. Or in London, where the docks along Ratcliffe Highway teemed with the frows of Flaundres—women from Flanders—famed in the seventeenth century for their sexual expertise. Prostitutes from the Low Countries, by the way, also had a stellar reputation in Florence (Cordingly 2011, Haemers 2022).
No, we leave behind the infamous ports of Shanghai, San Francisco, and the like, and instead begin our journey in the tranquil sailor town of Harlingen, nestled in the province of Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands. Not to be confused with its namesake in the state of Texas near the Mexican border—where violence, drugs, and prostitution remain serious problems—this Harlingen is a sleepy, picturesque seaport. It is one of a string of coastal towns and cities lining the southern shores of the North Sea, each boasting its own Sex-Meile—or red-light district. Whether it is Hazegras in Ostend, Het Zuid in Ghent, Schipperskwartier in Antwerp, Katendrecht in Rotterdam, De Wallen in Amsterdam, De Achterdam in Alkmaar, Weststraat in Den Helder, De Weaze in Leeuwarden, Nieuwstad and A-kwartier in Groningen, Lessingstraße in Bremerhaven, Helenenstraße in Bremen, Nadorster Straße in Oldenburg, or the infamous Reeperbahn, St. Pauli, and Herbertstraße in Hamburg, the maritime world has always had its own colourful undercurrent.
A common nickname for a sailor was 'Jan Hagel', synonymous with mob or scum (Christensen 2021), and—curiously—the name of an eighteenth-century biscuit, the janhagel. Sailor towns teeming with Jan Hagels looking for a berth have long been seen as hotbeds of vice, a notion deeply ingrained in our collective psyche. This idea was still taught a century ago through the well-behaved character Helmut Harringa in the 1910 novel of the same name by Hermann Martin Popert. Set in the seaport of Kiel, northern Germany—a sinful place filled with tars, whores, and brothels—the story’s hero, Harringa, is a tall Frisian from the region of Ostfriesland with blond hair, blue eyes, and 'pure blood'. He fights against adultery, prostitution, crime, and drinking, which he believes lead to racial degeneration. What he wants to preserve is the purity of the German people. When another character, a student named Friedrich, visits a Kiel brothel, contracts a venereal disease, and subsequently drowns himself in the Baltic Sea, the message could not be clearer (Beaven & Seiter 2020).
All in all, it is a cheesy, stomach-turning warning against consorting with whores. Even more remarkable is the fact that Popert, the author, was Jewish despite the novel’s obvious racial ideology and archetypal Frisian hero. But to be clear: this blog post is about seaports and their notorious reputation for immorality, with all the fascinating, raw edges that entails. Beyond that, any further parallels with the ideas of Helmut Harringa end here.
In 1915, the Netherlands' government set up a foundation in the fight against venereal diseases, named Nederlandsche Vereneeniging tot Bestrijding der Geslachtsziektes (Netherlands' foundation in fighting venereal diseases). One of the brochures distributed by this foundation reads: "Eene waarschuwing aan Zeelieden. Wendt u af van de ontucht" 'A warning to Sailors. Turn away from prostitution'. The cover of the brochure depicted a sailor being approached by a prostitute, with a skeleton symbolizing death behind her. Of course, the woman represented the danger, the evil... Like sirens luring mariners, or the Lorelei at dangers currents whirlpools of the River Rhine. Already in the Early Middle Ages beauty was associated with danger (Arnold 2024).
Warnings about brothels were not always driven by moral and sick conception—often, they were based on plain common sense and lived experience. From the memoirs of North Frisian seafarer Jens Jacob Eschels, who hailed from the Wadden Sea island of Föhr, we learn that Arctic whalers disembarking or embarking in Amsterdam sometimes paid a visit to the local brothels. Eschels’ father sternly warned him to stay away from the whores, drilling into his son's head the real and serious risk of venereal disease. And rightly so. On the 1770 whaling expedition, Eschels recounts how one of the crew members suffered terribly from such an infection (Bruijn 2016).
The free and liberal reputation of Dutch coastal culture extended far beyond the Netherlands—even reaching the shores north of Denmark. In 1743, a bailiff in Norway wrote: “Bønder ved sjøkanten er meget tilbøjelige til sjøfart med skibe, og sædelig til den hollandske nations levemaader, der medfører et meget frit levned og magelighed.” Translated, this means: The peasants along the [Norwegian] coast are much inclined toward seafaring and, in particular, to the lifestyle of the Dutch nation, which leads to a very free way of living and to laziness (Christensen 2021).
sailors by Andre Dignimont (1891-1965)
Sea, sailors, and sex workers were truly interconnected during the early modern period, which spanned from 1450 to 1800. Skippers, sailors, East India men, and Arctic whalers formed a significant portion of the clientele of prostitutes. Out at sea, the only beings that remotely resembled women were sirens, mermaids, and seewiefkes, but they were no good to satisfy the needs of tangible flesh. An indication of the interconnectedness is that sailors would sometimes even choose their spouses from a spinhuis, which served as both re-education houses and prisons for prostitutes. Although to a much lesser degree, the connection between seafaring and prostitution continues to exist to this day.
Whores and sailors each belonged to their own distinct subcultures, with characteristic clothing, rituals, and language. Sailors were fond of swearing, singing, gambling, and drinking. They wore long trousers and English knit caps, and their bodies were often covered in tattoos—swallows, pin-ups, mermaids, dice, and anchors—each symbol holding meaning and collectively telling the story of a sailor’s life. They even had a particular gait, a recognizable way of walking. VOC sailors had a reputation as either the cream of the crop or the worst of the worst. They were labelled villains, scoundrels, robbers, pickpockets, nightwalkers, and other such types—at least according to contemporary accounts. Though that may be a rather unfair generalization (Duijn 2016).
In addition to VOC sailors, those working the Nordic and Baltic Sea trade also made the most of their brief shore leaves—whether in Arkhangelsk, at the funfair in Danzig, or in the playhouses of Riga. These establishments in Riga even hoisted national flags to attract their respective clientele. Alongside music and revelry, women offered themselves for prostitution in these joints.
Also, both subcultures, whores and sailors, were considered being honourless in early-modern society (Van de Pol 2011). Readers who like to know where those seamen sang about, it was about hoeren 'whores', zwartinnen ‘black girls’, zoete vrouwtjes ‘sweet girls’, mooy meisjes ‘beautiful girls’, and venusdiertjes ‘venus creatures’ (De Wit 2008). Below a line of one of those sea shanties:
So up the stairs and into bed I took that maiden fair. I fired off my cannon into her thatch of hair. I fired off a broadside until my shot was spent, Then rammed that fire ship’s waterline until my ram was bent.
This introduction to the blog post's theme 'sailors and hookers' is not to suggest that prostitution was limited to coastal towns. Far from it. Everywhere on this blue planet where there are men—especially where men have been deprived of sex for a while—the sex trade thrives. Think of soldiers in garrison towns, like the districts of Itaewon and Yongsan-gu in the city of Seoul in Korea, once favourite haunts of American troops. Or gold diggers in remote mining settlements. And, of course, seafarers and navy men arriving in port after long voyages. Men who had spent weeks or months at sea, starved of sex and basic female companionship.
Beyond such contexts, cities in general have always provided a market for paid sex—simply due to their size. The large number of inhabitants creates demand, and the anonymity of urban life (Pluskota 2017) allows people to indulge in socially frowned-upon behaviour, including visiting prostitutes. Even tourists, far from home, might feel free to discreetly do their thing. Yes, already in the seventeenth century, as we will see further below. What happens in a brothel, stays in a brothel.
Prostitutes on board ships of the British Royal Navy (Stark 1996) — During most of the sixteenth and nineteenth century, the Royal Navy had a very specific human resources policy. A policy that somehow could not attract more personnel.
First of all, and especially during times of war, the Royal Navy had always shortage of seaman. Their solution was press gangs. Press gangs were sudden raids in towns and villages everywhere in the country whereby men were captured and forced to work as seaman on one of the warships. If times were really bad, even convicted criminals were placed on ships instead of prison.
Secondly, up to the mid-nineteenth century, in order to prevent fleeing, seamen of the Navy were never permitted leave when the ship called at port. As such this would not be a problem except that a ship could be commissioned for four years at sea. To alleviate the sexual needs of the seamen, prostitutes were allowed on a warship when it was in harbour. Not a few, but hundreds of prostitutes were ferried to the vessels. The lower deck turned into one big orgy that could last for days. Ports like Portsmouth and Plymouth were stuffed with prostitutes. Also in harbours overseas prostitutes, whether or not slaves, were brought on board.
Thirdly, wages were low, and for centuries did not keep pace with inflation. In addition, payment by the Royal Navy after fulfilling service was very slow. as well. It could be years before being paid.
Lastly, living conditions were terrible as well. Living in dirty, airless and cramped spaces below deck, with food that was simple and not healthy. Dying of an illness, therefore, was more often the case than due to acts of war.
Everything described here is, of course, far less captivating or glamorous than the romanticized world of Pretty Woman (1990), with Julia Roberts playing the implausibly innocent, rough-cut diamond of a prostitute. Nor does it resemble the storyline of Redeeming Love (2022), in which Abigail Cowen plays an abused sex worker who rediscovers love. These are modern retellings of the deeply rooted Mary Magdalene syndrome in Western culture—the fantasy of saving or being saved through love.
To all the men out there nursing Richard Gere fantasies in their comfortably numb heads, a reality check: clients are not special to sex workers. Not emotionally, not physically. Sex workers simply play the part—telling you you are a brave, desirable, exceptional man or special boy—while providing the service you paid for. Especially when you are a bink, slang for a well-paying customer.
In the Late Middle Ages, it was not just seaports that had a special relationship with prostitution—university towns did too. Not merely because students might visit a whore after one drink too many, or as part of bravado and hazing rituals. No, it was also common practice for some students to keep a prostitute to help finance their studies (Altink 1983). And to any modern-day students reading this: do not get any foolish ideas.
A famous late-medieval student was François Villon, who studied theology at the University of Paris. He, a bastard at birth, was the greatest thief-poet and, not to forget, womanizer France has ever had. A modest statue of François Villon stands near the Dom Church in the university town of Utrecht. Created by artist Marius van Beek in 1963, it is a small monument you will pass while hiking the Frisia Coast Trail. Villon was not only an infamous thief who narrowly escaped the gallows more than once, but also one of the great poets of his era. He was no stranger to the underworld of seedy taverns and prostitutes. As the poet Jan Slauerhoff once wrote in his Ballade: "Met boeven, lichtekooien saamgerot, Alleen op 't punt van rijmen vol geweten"—'With thieves, harlots rotten together, merely when it concerns rhyme full conscience.'
One of François Villon’s well-known phrases is: “En ce bordel où tenons notre état” 'in this brothel where we are established'. The poem is about whoremaster and innkeeper Fat Margot. We have quoted the final verse of Ballade de la grosse Margot, written in the Old French language in 1461, just before the early modern period began.
Vente, gresle, gelle, j’ay mon pain cuict! Je suis paillard, la paillarde me suit. Lequel vault mieux, chascun bien s’entresuit. L’ung l’autre vault: c’est à mau chat mau rat. Ordure amons, ordure nous assuyt. Nous deffuyons honneur, il nous deffuyt, En ce bordeau ou tenons nostre estat.
Come wind, hail, or ice, my bread is baked! | I am a dirty old man and a slut’s what suits me. | Which one is worse? We are a match, | Like unto like: bad rat, bad cat. | We relish in filth, so does filth surround us. | Virtue runs when it sees us, and we run from it, | In this brothel where we are established.
Let’s sail back from the River Seine to the Wadden Sea, to the sailors' town of Harlingen. Once we have sketched the history of sex and the sea in Harlingen, we will sail to broader horizons. To discover what life looked like for women living on the fringes of North Sea coastal society. The lives of women on the waterfront (Cordingly 2001).
2. Seaport Harlingen on the Wadden Sea
The Wadden Sea area is teeming with sea vessels, and thousands of sailors, fishermen, soldiers, suppliers, and passengers. Cargo ships went back and forth to ports on the shores of the Zuiderzee (now Lake IJsselmeer), English Channel, North Sea, White Sea, Baltic Sea, Skagerrak, Kattegat, Barents Sea, Greenland Sea, Labrador Sea, Bay of Biscay, Mediterranean Sea, etc. At ports and on islands of the Wadden Sea, there was a huge range of bars and taverns, and areas where women offered sex. Like Jeneverbuurtje 'gin borough', also called Kollegat on the Wadden Sea island of Texel. The word kol was an epithet for 'prostitute', and gat a term for 'bad area'. A small port on an island with only a few hundred inhabitants could have as many as twenty taverns. Names of taverns were: De Roode Leeuw 'the red lion', Buitenleven 'outdoor life', Het Gouden Vlies 'the golden fleece', and Moriaens Hooft 'Moor's head'. Even the church had a direct financial interest in abundant drinking. For every barrel of beer, the church on the Wadden Sea island of Vlieland received fifteen pennies (Doedens & Houter 2022).
One of the biggest seaports by the Wadden Sea was Harlingen. For a while it even could match its mighty southern neighbour Amsterdam.
2.1. brief history of the town and its people
Harlingen is situated in the northwest of the Netherlands, on the shores of the Wadden Sea. A shallow sea with strong tides, which falls dry twice a day during low tide. Read our blog post Yet Another Wayward Archipelago—the Wadden Sea to learn more about this muddy sanctuary and its common cultural heritage stretching from the province of Friesland in the Netherlands to the region of south-eastern Jutland in Denmark. Morphologically, Harlingen lies on the northern ridge of the former estuary of the Marne. The Marne was once a sea loch, continuing its way northbound under the name Jetting, up to the River Vlie, also written as Flee, flowing out into the North Sea eventually.
Just north of Harlingen, the River Ried flowed out into the sea. A modest stream along which the terps, i.e., artificial dwelling mounds, of the village of Wijnaldum are located. Provenance of the exquisite sixth-century Tjitsma-Wijnaldum brooch. Settlement started in this area in the second century AD. The spot where the stream Voorstraatslenk, today a modest shopping street with canal Kleine Voorstraat as a last faint remnant of the stream, flowed out into the sea is where the settlement of Harlingen developed. The mouth of the stream Voorstraatslenk used to be where Grote Bredeplaats Street is today. Later in time, the course of the River Ried was rerouted by men and connected to the stream Voorstraatslenk east of Harlingen.
On the south bank of the mouth of the stream Voorstraatslenk, there used to be a hand-dug pond. This pond supplied the settlement with sweet water in the otherwise salty environment of the former tidal marshlands. The current street names Vijverstraat and Vijver, previously written as Fijuer, still remind us of this pond (Schroor 2015). On old sixteenth-century charts, the pond is still visible. Vijverstraat 'pond street' is also the location of a former brothel, situated close to the gloomy harbour and dockyards. We will delve into more details about that later.
Harlingen in 1569 and 1866
In the beginning of the sixteenth century, sea traffic increased, and by the year 1550, Harlingen had developed into a real seaport. In the year 1565, Harlingen received octroi to expand the town (Spaans 1996). For the Habsburg dynasty, which possessed the Spanish Netherlands, Harlingen was strategically located near the sea. With three castles, it could be effectively defended as well. Brussels granted the town several privileges, including preferential rights on shipping cargo and the collection of certain taxes. One of those taxes was called paalgeld 'pole money', a lucrative tax for the maintenance of floating barrels and poles at sea to mark the waterways, and of (fire) beacons along the shores. This infrastructure is known in the Dutch language as the dode loodsen 'dead pilots', to help navigate the shallow seas, as opposed to (human) pilots. From 1559, Harlingen marked the waterways of the Jetting, Kromme Balg, Abt, and the Frisian Wadden Sea. With the revenues from the paalgeld tax, the town financed the poor relief (Doedens & Borsboom 2024).
Note that the port town a bit more to the south, Stavoren, is named after poles or staves. It might be coincidence. Check our blog post Stavoren. A balancer on a slack rope of religion, trade, land, water, Holland, and Frisia.
From the end of the sixteenth century, piggybacking on the economic boom of the brand-new independent Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (commonly Dutch Republic), Harlingen developed into a seaport of significance. The most important trade of Harlingen, and the province of Friesland for that matter, was navigation with England, Scotland, Brittany, southern Scandinavia, including much of the long Norwegian coast, Russia, and the Baltic Sea. Especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Baltic Sea trade flourished. Important commodities imported included timber and grains, but also weapons, gunpowder, tar, salt, and pelts. By the halfway point of the eighteenth century, 56 percent of this trade was held by Frisians from Harlingen, Hindeloopen, Makkum, Molkwierum, Stavoren, Workum, and the Frisian Wadden Sea islands. Furthermore, Harlingen also traded with the nearby 'free cities' Bremen, Altona, Hamburg, and with distant France, Spain, Portugal, and the Mediterranean more generally.
Also fishing, especially herring fishery, traditionally was an important economic activity. From the year 1635 onwards, when a kamer ‘department’ of the Noordsche Compagnie ‘northern company’ was established, Harlingen started ‘to fry bigger fish’ than herring and shrimp. This was the Arctic whale hunting and it brought additional possibilities. The kamer of Harlingen ceased to exist in 1662 (Hacquebord 2014). Classic Arctic whaling as a Harlingen economic activity as such, ended in 1863. Whaling, and long-distance seafaring in general, also had a major impact on the (more equal) social position of women living along the Wadden Sea coast of Germany and the Netherlands. Because for one thing, women were on their own on the island for much of the year. Read our blog post Happy Hunting Grounds in the Arctic.
With the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic Wars at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the sea trade collapsed. Never would it be restored to its former volume (Veluwenkamp 2022). The collapse of the sea trade hit Harlingen notably hard because it relied so strong on this sea trade, and because it was very densely populated. Check our blog post Know where to find your sweet potato. The cradle of district nursing, too to find out how hard. And, if you think the second millennium brought a change for the better for the impoverished people of Harlingen, it is not the case. Following repetitive academic research, if you are born in Harlingen you have the worst prospects within the Netherlands to climb on the social ladder and escape poverty to this very day (Westrheenen 2020).
During the era of the Dutch Republic, besides international sea trade, Harlingen was lucky that in the year 1645 the Admiralty of Province Friesland was relocated from the town of Dokkum to that of Harlingen. The rivers Dokkumerdiep and Lauwers, connecting Dokkum with the Wadden Sea, had silted up. Wharves and headquarter in Harlingen were located at the Zuiderhaven ‘southern harbour’. Other warehouses were spread over town. Presence of the Admiralty meant more economic advantages. Jobs for shipbuilders, rope makers, timber merchants, admiralty staff, solliciteurs (i.e., recruiters of sailors), millers, suppliers, victuals, lodgings, notaries, clerks, pilots, etc. Also taverns benefited from the presence of the Admiralty (Roodhuyzen 2003).
Not only economic prosperity but also prestige was added to the town with the establishment of the Admiralty. Prestige with local sea heroes like rear-admiral Hendrik Bruynsveldt (Harlingen), vice-admiral Rudolf Coenders (Harlingen), captain Jacobus Deketh (Harlingen), rear-admiral Christoffel Middaghten (Sexbierum), commander Hidde Sjoerds de Vries (Sexbierum), and, last but not least, admiral Tsjerk Hiddes (Sexbierum). Other prestigious mariners settled in Harlingen, like admiral Auke Andriesz. Stellingwerf, captain Wytze Joannisz. Beyma, captain Symon Jansen Codde (Amsterdam), and captain Andries van de Bukckhorst (Noordwijk).
Hier in Prins Willem, ‘t Hooft van Hollands Batavieren, Verkoop ik, maar met winst, Vicuali voor die geen Die om ‘s Lands neering hare schepen zeewaarts stieren, Om onder ‘t Bootsvolk dat te deelen in ‘t gemeen.
Here at Prince William, Head of Holland’s Batavians, | I sell, with profit, victuals for those | Who steer their ships seabound for the Country’s trade, | To be shared equally among the Boat folk
(inscription of a victual house in Harlingen)
It was also from halfway the sixteenth century that Flemings, mostly Baptists, started to settle in Harlingen. This migration flow continued until around 1700. According to the Frisian statesman Wigle Aytta van Zwichem (1507-1577), commonly known as Viglius, and the principal advisor of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, Harlingen attracted many heretics because it was considered a haven from religious prosecutions. Flemish migrants were skilled in the manufacturing of cloth. Their skills perhaps dating back to the early medieval period, when the coastal plains of Flanders were still part of Frisia; read our blog post A Frontier known as Watery Mess: the Coast of Flanders. Woollen cloth was rinsed with bare feet in big tubs filled with water. Comparable with traditional wine production. This supposedly is the reason why citizens of Harlingen in common parlance are named tobbedansers ‘tub dancers’ to this day (Otten 2021).
Later, in the eighteenth century, many migrants from the area of Westphalia in Germany settled in Harlingen as well, the so-called Hollandsgänger. They were weavers who worked in the cotton and hemp industry. Most of them were Catholic, explaining why about 15 per cent of the Harlingen citizens was member of this religion. Lastly, Mennonites constituted an influential community. Two-third of the Harlingen elite was Mennonite. Rejecting the use of violence, they were well represented in the 'non-violent' trade and commerce. With the economic growth and migration between 1530 and 1780, Harlingen had become one of the most densely populated towns of the Netherlands and would continue to be until the beginning of the twentieth century (Dijkstra 2006).
Around 1870, Harlingen was still the third biggest harbour of the Netherlands (Schroor 2015). Today, Harlingen stands at the back of the line behind the Dutch ports of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Velsen, IJmuiden, Terneuzen, Vlissingen, and Delfzijl. Even the thousands of tourists taking the ferries to the Wadden Sea islands of Vlieland and Terschelling give the town only a quick glance from afar while rushing from the parking lot to the ferry.
2.2. brothels, sailors, and other Johns
After having set the scene of this old seaport, let’s look at prostitution in its harbour quarters. First a quote of the great Dutch writer originating from Harlingen, Simon Vestdijk, setting the scene of Harlingen too in his famous, autobiographical novel ‘Terug tot Ina Damman’ (Return to Ina Damman) in 1934:
"Lahringen telt zes kerken, geen enkel bordeel en zeven scheersalons"
Lahringen [pseudonym for Harlingen] counts six churches, not one brothel and seven shaving parlours
(Simon Vestdijk).
Vestdijk also wrote that Harlingen possessed strikingly high numbers of idiots, drunks, imbecile prostitutes, misfits, troublemakers, and physically deformed, all living out on the street.
Harlingen has a vivid tradition of giving nicknames to people, and Vestdijk listed many nicknames, too. A few of these, semi relevant for this blog post, are Engelsch hoertje (English little whore), Hoertje Doet (little whore Doet), Trien zonder broek (Trien without pants), and Spaansche Billen (Spanish bottom). At least some of these were real nicknames. Trien zonder broek, as citizens recall, strolled along the jetties where ships were moored. From down below, through the gaps between the wooden planks of the jetty, boatmen could confirm that Trien did not wear any underclothes.
To this day, tobbedansers give nicknames to each other (Visser 2004). Two recent Harlingen nicknames, also related to the topic of this blog post, are Gouden Kontsje 'golden bottom' and Sneeuwwitje 'snowy white'. For reasons of privacy we cannot elaborate too much on who they were, but they allegedly were moonlighting offering sex, besides that there was a woman with heavily bleached blond hair living at the Noorderhaven harbour. who was named Gouden Kontsje, too. Sneeuwwitje received her name because she always was clothed in a white dress. She frequently took a walk on the dark dockside for clientele. As if she was a white nun belonging to the order of fallen women, a so-called witvrouw (see further below).
In Harlingen, there existed the folktale of the juffer 'young woman' who in wintertime walked up and down the Juffersbrug 'juffer's bridge' near the sluice at the Noordijs 'north ice' harbour. A juffertje was also a nickname for a prostitute. She was as white as snow and came from beneath the ice of the canal. She never harmed anyone. When asked why she walked up and down the bridge, her answer was that her desire had never been satisfied (Dykstra 1966). Today, the bridge is gone. It may be better not to restore it.
Earning additional cash from sailors was also a practice known in the port of Delfzijl in the province of Groningen in the twentieth century, after the Second World War. Delfzijl is also a port at the Wadden Sea in the Dollart Bight and the mouth of the River Ems, opposite the city of Emden in the region of Ostfriesland, Germany. The people of Delfzijl used to distinguish between two types of girls who prostituted themselves, namely bakkerswichten ‘bakery girls’ reserved for captains, and petroleumventsters ‘petrol hawkers’ who were available for ordinary sailors (Boon website).
The fact that when Vestdijk wrote his book ‘Terug tot Ina Damman’ (1934), there were no brothels in Harlingen does not mean there never were any. We traced four former whorehouses in the period between 1531 and 1891. Without a doubt, there have been many more stews, i.e., brothels, bawdy houses, and bad inns, and we are open to extending the list. Please let us know. Anonymity guaranteed!
brothel Vastenavond
The oldest of the four whorehouses in Harlingen we discovered is Vastenavond, established in the year 1531. Vastenavond is mentioned in the manuscript of Seerp Gratama (1757-1837). Gratama was a professor at the University of Groningen. Vastenavond is the name for Shrove Tuesday. Hence carnival, when people had a wild night with much drinking and men who went het pijpje uitkloppen, as the expression was, literally meaning 'cleaning the little pipe', an euphemism for visiting a whore. The reason why this brothel existed was that the town and its port were growing, thus becoming a labor market for prostitution, too. Where in town brothel Vastenavond was located, Gratama does not reveal to the reader.
brothel King of England
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a brothel near the old town gate Franeker Poort, which is on the inland eastern side of town—you could say the outskirts of town. The brothel was identified by the signboard 'King of England.' The brothel’s name 'King of England' might indicate the presence of an English-Scottish community in Harlingen (Sprunger 1982). We could not determine the exact premises in which the brothel was housed. The brothel was frequented by students at the academy or university in the nearby town of Franeker, eight kilometers dead east of Harlingen.
Brothel 'King of England' was not solely frequented by Franeker students; however, at least one professor at the same university did so, too. This was the lazy-eyed professor of theology Jan Makowski (1588-1644) from Poland, or in the fashionable Latin of the time, Johannes Maccovius. Indeed, another John going to the whores. Makowski was an erudite man. Already in 1615, at the young age of 27, he was appointed as a professor at the University of Franeker. He got himself into trouble because of fierce theological disputes with other scholars, which led to charges of heresy only a few years after his appointment. Professor and orthodox Protestant Sibrand Lubbert from the village of Langwarden in the region of Butjadingen was responsible for these insinuations against Makowski (Van der Sluis 2015). At the same time, he spent his life on riotous living, being popular among students but receiving complaints from other scholars (Boeles 1878).
A final note on Makowski is that he was married to Antje van Uylenburgh from the town of Leeuwarden. She was the sister of Saskia van Uylenburgh, who was married from 1634 to the world-famous Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn. In other words, Rembrandt and Jan were brothers-in-law. Not suggesting Rembrandt drank too much liquor and visited brothels, too. Of course not, we would not dare to criticize a Dutch icon of widespread human but socially unacceptable behaviour.
Another, internationally famous student at the university of Franeker was the Frisian and future statesman Pieter Stuyvesant (1611?-1672). He would become New Amsterdam’s, modern New York City, governor between 1646 and 1664. During his study of philosophy in Franeker, which he probably started in 1628, Stuyvesant is known for rough behaviour in taverns in Harlingen and for having sex with the daughter of his landlord. Stuyvesant never received a degree because, in 1630, he was expelled after the incident with the landlord's daughter (Otto 1999). Did Pieter Stuyvesant and Jan Makowski party all night long together, perhaps? Of course, not with Rembrandt van Rijn. Again, we would not dare to suggest any indecent behaviour of this icon.
"En ce bordeau ou tenons nostre estat"
—
'In this brothel where we are established'
(Villon 1461)
Not merely tars, students, professors, Scots, future statesmen, and perhaps the occasional artist or talented painter visited bars and brothels in the port of Harlingen. Also, men from Harlingen, the so-called tobbedansers, visited whore houses in other places in the country. An amusing story has been documented.
In the year 1641, a burgomaster from Harlingen had a notarial act drawn up in a desperate effort to prove he had not visited a whorehouse in the city of The Hague for the purpose of having sex. Instead, the burgomaster declared he was pooping in an alley when all of a sudden two or three whores grabbed his hat and coat. Clothes were very valuable back then. You could even pay with them. Not to soil his, also, expensive underpants, he carefully wiped himself, hiked up his trousers, and started running after the lady-thieves. He ended up in a whorehouse. The bawd immediately notified the corrupt bailiff. The bailiff who arrived made it perfectly clear to the burgomaster he would not make any mention of the burgomaster’s presence in the whorehouse if he paid 185 guilders and promised to deliver half a barrel of butter as well. Delivering justice in a flash. The burgomaster agreed, because otherwise he would lose his honour. When he was already on his way back to Harlingen with his hat and coat, the burgomaster reconsidered his actions and went back to The Hague. He had drawn up a notarial deed unilaterally, stating his side of the story to defend his honour (Van de Pol 1996, Kools 1997, Frijhof & Spies 2004). Was the burgomaster really quick with wiping himself and chasing the women, or were the latter terribly slow in running away, we wonder?
Of course, instead of being robbed while pooping in an alley, yeah right!, an alternative sequence of events is one whereby the athletic burgomaster was robbed of his hat and coat during a planned visit to a brothel, and the bailiff was fetched by the madam after the burgomaster started to make trouble with her of with her girls.
brothels at Vijverstraat & Grote Ossemarkt streets
By the late nineteenth century, around 1875, two brothels operated in the port town of Harlingen. They stood close together in the quarter adjacent to the Zuiderhaven harbour and its shipyards—a district of vice, filled with seedy boarding houses, rowdy taverns, and disreputable establishments, teeming with nocturnal figures of ill repute. One imagines the neighbourhood steeped in the scent of tar, fish, and horse manure (Cordingly 2001), a vivid backdrop to the murky life along the waterfront.
One brothel was located at the already mentioned address: Vijverstraat 28. It was successively operated by Neeltje Sijtsma, Jan Winkel, and Bastiaantje Bongen. This was a relatively large establishment, employing between three and seven prostitutes at a time. The second brothel stood at Grote Ossemarkt 8 and was run by Johannes Antonius Pieters. Smaller in scale, it housed only two women. In fact, two or three sex workers per house was typical for brothels of the period. The clientele likely included not only sailors, students, and professors from the University of Franeker, as well as local townsfolk, but also soldiers, since a military garrison was still stationed in Harlingen at the time. As a side note, it is worth mentioning that almost exactly a century later, the author of this blog post was born in the building that once housed Johannes Pieters' brothel.
Interestingly, two of the four known whoremasters were women. We will come back to the role whore madams had. The so-called johns or whoremongers who visited these brothels were mainly sailors, since Harlingen only had about 10,000 inhabitants back then, of which about half were male. The number of adult men was even lower, of course. Whores working in these two brothels mainly came from the north of the Netherlands, like the towns of Groningen and Leeuwarden (De Mik 1985).
Brothel keeper Neeltje Sijtsma of the brothel on Vijverstraat Street is also known from the archives for making a plea at the town council in 1875. She requested that her girls should not be obliged to present themselves for the twice-weekly medical examination with the stadschirurgijn ‘town chirurgeon’ at publicly known, fixed hours and location. This was degrading and humiliating for the girls, Sijtsma said. The stadschirurgijn supported Sijtsma’s reasonable and ahead-of-its-time plea. The medical check-up itself originated from the Code Pénal 'penal code' during the French period 1794-1815. Periodic medical examinations had become mandatory for prostitutes to prevent the spread of venereal diseases, including among soldiers. After the French period, the Code Pénal of 1810 was abolished, and it was unclear to town administrations whether to regulate the sanitation of prostitutes or not. Should public health prevail, or would that imply you sanctioned an immoral pact with evil? An illustration that every era is entitled to have its own difficult questions and dilemmas.
Harbours and garrison towns began regulating prostitution again not long after the French period, prompted by the rise of syfilistische aandoeningen—'syphilitic conditions' (Muyres 2019). In Harlingen, regulation resumed with a police ordinance issued in 1851, the same year the Gemeentewet ('municipal act') came into force, which granted municipalities the authority to establish their own rules regarding prostitution (Oud Harlingen magazine 1996). Harlingen was the third town in the Netherlands to implement such regulation, following Alkmaar and Den Helder in the province of Noord-Holland (De Mik 1985).
The ordinance was titled 'Van publieke vrouwen en huizen van ontucht'—'concerning public women and houses of fornication.' Under this system, prostitutes were required to register in order to retain their rode boekje ('red booklet')—effectively a permit to work legally. However, this system was short-lived. In 1878, the ordinance was repealed. By then, public opinion had shifted further toward viewing prostitution as a morally corrupt and undesirable practice that should not be legitimized in any way.
Aside, we found that the port town of Vlissingen ('Flushing') in the province of Zeeland already had regulated prostitution in 1829 with the "Reglement op de zoogenaamde Publieke Huizen en Publieke Vrouwen binnen de Stad Vlissingen" ('regulation concerning so-called public houses and public women within the town of Flushing'. Another interesting side note, when in 1856 the town of Den Helder regulated prostitution, it was Christina K. daughter of a porter, who successfully asked permission to start a brothel. As such not very out of the ordinary. Sensational thing was Christina’s age, namely 13 years. When she was 28, Christina was the owner of a brothel in the university town of Leiden in the province of Zuid Holland. Quite a career.
During the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Netherlands' parliament struggled intensively with the issue of prostitution. It compromised between Victorian moralism, religious confessionalism, socialism, and liberalism. Confessionalists favoured a purely restrictive approach, simply forbidding prostitution altogether. Socialists pleaded for social reforms through legislation. According to classical liberalism, however, legislation should moralize as little as possible in general. Prostitution was considered an economic activity that the free market and society should regulate themselves. Nevertheless, more and more progressive liberals became of the opinion that legislation was needed to correct injustices resulting from a dysfunction of the political, economic, and social organization (Brummer 2021).
For a long time, this balance or stalemate between political views was the reason why no legislation on how to deal with prostitution came into effect, let alone legislation to improve the social position of prostitutes and vulnerable women living in poverty in general. In fact, despite growing opinion and support for state intervention to improve the position of sex workers, it did not prevent the approval of the "Wet ter bestrijding van zedenloosheid" ('law on combating debauchery') in 1911 by parliament, penalizing brothels and trafficking of women. A true moral confessional action without taking into account social contexts.
At present, only a few countries in the world have legalized and decriminalized sex work. These are Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Turkey, and Belgium. The latter country even grants the right to maternity leave and pensions (Bettiza 2024).
3. Demonization of Women
Ginds sluipt de speelbal van verbeestelijke lusten, Als op fluwelen voet, naar nachthuis en bordeel; Bevlekt zijn echtkoest; maakt gespannen in het gareel Der ontucht, d’eed ten spel, verscheurt den band der trouwe En zinkt, vol geilen drift, in d’arm der vreemde vrouwe, Die met haar reed’nen vleit, en met haar adem doodt.
Over there creeps the plaything of beastly lusts, | As if on velvet feet, to night house and brothel; | Stains his outspread; making tensed in the reins | Fornication, the oath at risk, rips the bond of fidelity | And sinks, full great desire, in the arms of an unknown woman, | Who flatters with her words, and kills with her breath.
(J.F. Jongs 1842)
This moral condemnation of women, not of the consuming men earning money through sex, is also illustrated by the much-praised Dutch contemporary writer Jacob van Lennep in his book "De lotgevallen van Klaasje Zevenster," ('The Fortune of Klaasje Zevenster'), published in 1866.
As an orphan, Klaasje was raised by three students at the university of Leiden. Klaasje was a very pure girl. At later age, after a chain of events, she ends up in a bawdy house owned by brothel keeper Madame Mont-Athos. This was beyond Klaasje her fault. Fortunately, she was rescued by one of her three foster fathers, who visited the brothel. Just before she was forced to have sex with a customer for the first time. So, she had preserved her virginity. Nevertheless, innocent Klaasje dies young of a heart illness. The reason she had to die was, according to Van Lennep himself, that although she was a harmless girl by nature, the disgrace of having stayed in a brothel is simply ineradicable. Regardless of the fact her stay was beyond her will, and regardless of the fact she had not had sex with a man (Peters 1990). A near-fundamentalistic warning from Van Lennep for everyone to stay away from sex workers as far as possible. And, Van Lennep entirely 'overlooked' that one of the foster fathers was at the brothel as well.
Not for nothing it was the prudish Victorian era. A time even chair legs were covered to prevent sinful thoughts from arising with ladies. Meanwhile, everyone was buying Van Lennep's book because people could read scenes describing a brothel from the inside. Thrilling and red cheeks! Smart thinking, Van Lennep, smart thinking. Be reminded, earlier in this blog post we discussed a very similar deadly warning concerning visits to brothels, given in the racist novel Helmut Harringa written by Popert in 1910.
There was also serious criticism concerning the mental limitations of Van Lennep, including from a Frisian feminist. She was Sietske Cornelisdr. Abrahamsz., originating from the Wadden Sea island of Ameland, and a true libertarian. Her uncle was another famous Dutch writer, Eduard Douwes Dekker, alias Multatuli, renowned for his book "Max Havelaar, of De Koffij-veilingen der Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij" ('Max Havelaar; or, The Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company') written in 1860, a book addressing the colonial wrongs in the Dutch Indies.
The ideas of Van Lennep fit the Calvinistic dogmas of the time. Catholicism, on the other hand, believes that the redemption of prostitutes is possible instead of harsh punishment for committing sins. Who does not know the story of Mary Magdalene, the supposedly fallen woman who became a repentant sinner, although the Bible does not state that Mary Magdalene actually was a whore. She did kiss Jesus on his cheek, though, which is, as everyone knows, practically the same. In the Middle Ages, prostitutes were also described as susteren van Magdalene 'sisters of Magdalene'. What is more, the Roman Catholic Church even has a dedicated monastic order for fallen women: the Order of Saint Mary Magdalene. Already for eight centuries, nuns of this order are called in the German language Büßerinnen ‘penitents’, or in the Latin language sorores poenitentes ‘penitential sisters’. They are dressed in white and sometimes called witvrouwen 'white women' in the Dutch language. And we are back at the woman in the port of Harlingen nicknamed Sneeuwwitje 'snowy white', moonlighting on the dockside in the '80s of last century.
Vulcanus was een horenbeest, Sijn wijf een schoon juweel. Sijn huis is vóór een smids geweest En achter een bordeel.
Volcanos [Greek god of fire] was whore’s beast, | His wife a wonderful jewel. | The front of his house was a smithy | And the back a brothel.
(Van Lennep & Ter Gouw 1868)
The fun is over. After nondescript johns, hilarious prudish writers, eye-catching snowy whites and golden bottoms, drunken professors, and pooping burgomasters, it is time to face reality and delve into the hard lives of countless brave women who lived on the southern shores of the North Sea. As stated, we will focus on the late medieval and, especially, early modern periods.
4. Late Medieval Period
Things went completely and utterly wrong in Paradise, a very long time ago. Nobody knows exactly how long ago. Eve ate the forbidden fruit because the Devil told her to. All she did was nibble from an apple—now on the lap of those who have the money for it—and both men and women were kicked out of Paradise for good. It is from then on that women have been carrying the original sin. In the Middle Ages, Christendom was a religion of piety, virginity, and devotion. By nature, sinful women were regarded as a necessary evil, needed for the reproduction of mankind. At the same time, men were not allowed to spill any of their seed either. In other words, sexuality was completely defined by religion, and the only acceptable excuse to have sex was reproduction (Altink 1983).
Bawdy women, meaning women who behaved indecently, and thus not necessarily prostituting themselves for money, had to be brought back onto the path of righteousness. Examples are the aforementioned Mary Magdalene and the medieval Dutch nun Beatrijs, but also the allegedly nymphomaniacal Mary of Egypt, the harlot Pelagia of Antioch, and the Greek prostitute Thaïs. In Dante’s poem "Divina Commedia" ('Divine Comedy') written in 1320, whores were even ranked lower in the pecking order than cold-blooded murderers (Altink 1983). Thus, the souls of prostitutes burned deeper in Hell. Yes, at this very moment, the soul of Jack the Ripper sits in a more comfortable, cooler place in Hell than the souls of the women he brutally slaughtered. How is that for delivering justice?
Punishment of a prostitute consisted of cutting off the nose and ears, or burying women alive. Indeed, the world was still very far removed from the World Charter for Prostitutes’ Rights signed in 1985 during the first World Whores Congres in Amsterdam. One relativization is in order, though, namely that in practice it seems these sentences were carried out only incidentally. Many were acquitted, especially if they were young and first-time offenders (Vos 2007).
In the course of the Middle Ages, Europe underwent a process of urbanization. Towns grew, and real cities emerged, attracting people from everywhere. It was then, for the first time, that prostitutes started to appear near markets, mills, shops, churches, smithies, and so forth. At the end of the Middle Ages, prostitution was regulated by the church and town administrations. Whores, or deernen ‘maidens’, or lichte wiven ‘light women’, as they were called in the Low Countries, were considered inevitable if you wanted to prevent men from committing even worse sins, like raping honourable women, sodomy, and adultery. Prostitution was a necessary evil, according to the church (Vos 2007, Dussen 2020), a concept of thinking that remained well into the seventeenth century; hopefully, not any longer. Also, bathhouses functioned as brothels, known as a stove in England and stoof in the Low Countries (Hamers 2022).
Notwithstanding the fact that prostitution was being regulated, prostitutes were considered disturbing elements in society. Therefore, they could only live and conduct their business in designated areas on the outskirts of town or even outside the city walls, to ensure a clear separation between honourable and non-honourable people (De Graeve 2010, Muyres 2019). Signboards with green images of exotic birds informed the visitor that it was the door of a whorehouse he was knocking on. In addition, whores were obliged to wear a distinctive feature on their clothes, like a red ribbon. In the year 1389, the town council of Maastricht in the province of Limburg decreed that sex workers had to carry a yellow ribbon on their hats or headscarves (Haemers 2022). Furthermore, whores were not allowed to have a steady or regular customer. Moreover, they could only render their services to unmarried Christians. Having sex with a Jew was forbidden. Jews, by the way, were not allowed to touch fruit and bread either, let alone a non-Jewish woman of flesh and blood. Neither were prostitutes allowed to work on holy days. Lastly, there was supervision of their food and of the tariffs whores charged for their services. Prices for sex should not become too high if prostitution was to stay effective in preventing, so to speak, greater evils.
In towns where brothels were located outside the walls, small fortresses developed. Outside the city walls brothels were vulnerable for plunderers and roaming armies in times of war. Therefore these brothels turned into fortified houses with sometimes even their own drawbridge.
"Een hoere es een wijf die dair der oncuyscher begeerten van veele mannen bereet ende ter wille is."
A whore is a woman who is ready and willing for the indecent desires of many men.
(Willem van der Tanerijen, fifteenth century)
Also, designated houses were created by town authorities, where deernen, or Dirnen in modern German, were obliged to work, that is, spinning wool. Each day, the bawdy women had to produce a certain amount of wool. These premises became the so-called spinhuizen ‘spinning houses’. The first spinhuis of Amsterdam was founded in 1597, with the purpose of re-educating women, and has been preserved as well, albeit no longer with women doing compulsory work. You can visit it at Oudezijds Achterburgwal Street. Because we discussed the port of Harlingen earlier, there was also a spinhuis there, on the south-eastern edge of town.
In the seventeenth century, spinhuizen had developed into prisons. Spinhuizen were open to the public; during lunch breaks, people peeked at dishonourable women. A visit to one of the spinhuizen was a standard item on the itinerary of the many tourists visiting Amsterdam (Van de Pol 1996, 2011). Today, it would be included in the 'Top things to do' in the Lonely Planet guide to Amsterdam. As mentioned before, a city nicknamed ‘Whore on the IJ’.
De Hoer aan ’t IJ is voor elk geld te koop Die vaart voor Paap en Heiden, Moor en Turk Die geeft om God noch ’t lieve Vaderland Die vraagt naar Winst alleen, naar Winst! Naar Winst!
The Whore on the IJ can be bought for any money | She sails for Pope and Pagan, Muslim and Turk | She does not care for God nor her dear Fatherland | She merely asks for Profit, for Profit! For Profit!
(seventeenth-century Minister)
Conceptions about sexuality and women in the late medieval period also had the consequence that women were vulnerable to being assaulted. If a woman displayed free and inappropriate behaviour, she could become a target for assault and rape. She would not only be a victim physically and mentally but also be powerless to defend or restore her honour afterwards. This had far-reaching consequences. Once without honour, she would not stand a chance to secure a respectable job. Further below, we will elaborate on the concept of honour. The fact that her attitude and behaviour were considered too ‘lightly’ meant she was as honourless as a whore, and raping a whore was essentially without judicial consequence for a man. If rape happened to a woman, prostitution was therefore one of the few options left to earn money for survival.
The recent movie The Last Duel (2021) with Jodie Comer is about the vulnerability of honourable, emancipated women in the Late Middle Ages. The bitter medieval logic was that it was better to accept some lichte wiven, literally 'light women', i.e., sex workers, because they would serve as protection for honourable women (Vos 2007). Indeed, to prevent a greater evil. Whores as decoys for instinct-driven men.
By the way, a similar, current word in the Dutch language for licht wijf is lichtekooi. This is originally a nautical term, whereby licht (light) means 'easy' and kooi means 'bed', so a woman easy to get into bed.
5. Early Modern Period
Before we continue, it is important to highlight two aspects of early modern society in order to understand the social position of women in this region better. The first is the concept of honour, which we touched upon already. Putting it bluntly, any person without honour had a value of no more than that of a hog or a dog. An honourless person was considered vuyl ‘foul’. In modern Dutch, the word vuil has the meaning ‘dirty’, and the epithet vuil wijf is frequently used to this very day. The second aspect is the degree of equality, or inequality, if you will, of women when compared to men.
5.1. honour society and chastity
Honour in the early modern period, but also during many centuries before, was vital. If a man had no honour, he had no known good reputation and no creditworthiness either. Therefore, among other things, he would not get any financial credit. Neither would proper jobs and official positions be available for him. In other words, honour governed every aspect of a man’s life (Frijhof 2004).
This mechanism is understandable. Reputation in a world without our modern regulating and registration institutions was all one had. Even today, reputation and integrity are still modestly relevant in Western society, but in no way as strong as a few centuries ago. Today, you can sue someone for slander and libel in court, but it does not happen much and, in general, offers little compensation. Back in the early modern period, honour was of vital importance and had to be defended at all costs, and increased as much as possible. Bankruptcy or fraud, for example, was considered shameful and meant you lost much or all of your honour. When bankrupt, a man had to lay down all his public and church functions. Emigrating to one of the VOC’s colonies was one of the few ways to start over with a clean slate. More about the emigration option for survival later. The concept of honour was even physical. Touching money earned from dishonourable activity affected one’s honour. The best thing to do with dirty cash was to give it as alms to the poor. Money laundering in reverse, as it were.
Contrary to southern Europe, women in north-western Europe had their own, independent honour to nourish and defend. The difference was, if a man lost his honour in, for example, France or Italy, his wife would lose hers as well. Furthermore, when a woman ‘misbehaved’ socially, this had a negative impact on the honour of both her husband and his family. This was not the case in north-western Europe (De Graeve 2010). If a man lost his honour, his wife still had her own honour unaffected, and vice versa. In the Low Countries, people typically spoke of an eerlycke 'honourable' or oneerlycke 'dishonourable' woman. By the way, women dressing up as men was not considered dishonourable. These women ‘merely’ acted against God’s creation and its laws. Keep it in mind, we will come back to this social phenomenon of cross-dressing and travesty in the seventeenth century extensively.
A person was by definition also honourless if she or he was either a foreigner, not a Protestant, unemployed, a criminal, an adulterer, a fornicator, unreliable concerning money, no longer a virgin, a prostitute, a carny, a charlatan, a soldier or sailor working for the VOC, and, most importantly, if he was doing women’s labour (Van de Pol 2011). So, not all jobs were honourable. Actually, only a limited number of honourable jobs were available to women. Jobs that paid little and were often seasonal, too. For women of the lower class, it was therefore difficult to make a living throughout the year, whilst some dishonourable jobs paid better, sometimes as much as a man's job. Indeed, professions like prostitute, whore madam, but also innkeeper annex zielenverkoper ‘souls broker’ could offer better perspectives. Concerning the remarkable job description zielenverkoper, we will say more about it further below as well.
Became curious what role honour played in the Early and High Middle Ages in Frisia? Read our blog post You killed a man? That'll be 1 weregeld, please. Additionally, younger readers of this blog post can see similarities with the present-day concept of aura, something that can be enlarged or reduced, too, depending on one's actions and as perceived by their specific social context.
5.2. inferiority of women to men
Concerning the social position of women in early-modern society, the first relevant notion is that women had lesser access to the labour market than men. Honourable jobs for lower-class women were basically limited to garment trade, textile industry, food services, and domestic service, i.e., being hired as a housemaid. The second notion is that wages for women were about half that of men. The minimum wage for a man amounted to around 3 gulden 'guilders' per week. A prostitute earned about 6 guilders and had to pay the madam about half her earnings, or 'op 't halfje' ('on the half/even') as the expression was in Amsterdam. A third notion is that women in north-western Europe married at a relatively older age, on average when they were between 25 and 30 years old, compared to southern Europe (De Graeve 2010). This meant women had to take care of themselves for a longer time and did not move straight from their own family into that of their husband. In other words, in the southern parts of Europe, the marriage age was much younger. For young women to generate income, the possibilities in Amsterdam were even slimmer because of the surplus of women during the early modern period in this city, and thus more competition (Thuijs 2020).
Furthermore, the way men regarded women was as inferior. We have said much about it already. Amongst others, women were regarded as ledigh, literally ‘empty’. Idleness led to sexual desires, and this was dangerous because in that way the Devil had the opportunity to get hold of a woman’s body and soul. Hence, women were often portrayed as dangerous, deceitful, bawdy temptresses. The underlying notion was that women were the perpetrators and men their victims (De Graeve 2010). To quote a song lyric: "When the lady smiles, a man cannot resist her call" (Hay 1984). One of the nicknames of a whore was, therefore, ledighe vrouw, meaning a hollow or idle woman. Anyway, it is just one example of how women were perceived and thus seriously discriminated against. To be complete, also men could be ledigh, but—surprise surprise—in general, their sin for being idle was considered less dangerous than that of women. Perhaps the Devil's, a male, preference was for women?
The paradox is that women of the wider North Sea region were relatively more independent and assertive compared to other regions in Europe, but at the same time more vulnerable. Economically, they had to take care of themselves for a long time, meanwhile having limited access to the labour market, and on top of that, their wages were significantly lower than those of men. Longer periods of not being married made them vulnerable as well, of course. If this, at the same time, was combined with the pretty appearance of a girl from the lower class, the risk of being lured into prostitution was higher. Lastly, as explained, in north-western Europe women possessed honour themselves, but had to defend this themselves, too. At the same time, moral codes about what behaviour was honourable and what was not made women almost defenceless against sexual assault.
The conclusion, therefore, is that freedom is fragile, and liberties bring limitations, as the liberties always do.
Note that once a woman had married, she became legally incompetent. From then on, the husband was the only one legally competent to decide over money and goods (De Wit 2010). Widows and divorced women were, again, legally competent. For this reason, examples of successful businesswomen were regularly widows. Think of widow Beetke van Rasquert (died in 1554), widow Johanna Borski (1764-1846), who invested in the first railways, and the so-called Zaanse weduwen, that is, the widows from the Zaan region in the province of Noord Holland (Van der Hut 2022). And, of course, Frisians prefer their Berenburg liquor of the 150-years-old brand Weduwe Joustra. In the Netherlands, women were legally incompetent until—and please do not shoot the messenger—1957. We will come to this issue of legal competence again later.
5.3. arrival of Protestants and syphilis
In the year 1494, an outbreak of the sexually transmitted disease syphilis occurred. It had epidemic proportions and prostitution was one of the contributing factors. It brought a new fear of sex and hatred towards prostitutes (Van de Pol 2010). Not long after, the Protestant faith and doctrine would spread over large parts of Europe.
With the arrival of Protestantism in the wider North Sea region, the social view on prostitution changed as well, and not to its benefit. It meant an end to the leniency of the Roman Catholic Church towards prostitution. According to the Protestant Church, a sinner could not be forgiven but should be punished for his faults. This, in combination with the fact that chastity of both men and women became of paramount importance (Van de Pol 2011, Dussen 2020). With the so-called Alteratie ‘overturn’ of Amsterdam in 1578, whereby the power changed from the Catholics to the Protestants, prostitution was forbidden. Two years after the Alteratie, especially facilitators of prostitution were criminalized. The change of policy meant bailiffs no longer supervised brothels and prostitutes. Imagine: to compensate the bailiffs for the loss of their income, some city councils raised their salary (De Wildt 2011).
More and more brothels were shut down in the second half of the sixteenth century. Consequently, prostitution went underground and spread throughout town in discreet houses. The former clear, visual distinction between honourable and non-honourable people, both in dress codes and in spatial separation, disappeared from daily street life. With the emergence of Protestantism, women were regarded as lascivious, hypocritical, innately horny, and susceptible to the Devil. Meyskens van plaisir ‘girls for pleasure’ was a typical derogatory expression. In other words, women could turn into a harlot in a split second, so you could never let your guard down.
However, banning prostitution in the Dutch Republic soon turned out to be impossible. During the seventeenth century, from time to time, flare-ups to round up and convict prostitutes were organized by the authorities, but by the eighteenth century, these operations were over (Thuijs 2020). Especially in the city of Amsterdam, controlling prostitution was utopian. Additionally, the urbanization of the province of Holland and the region of Westfriesland was too strong to maintain a strict policy concerning prostitution. The massive influx of trade, merchants, sailors, soldiers, immigrants, tourists, etc., created a huge labour market for prostitution.
Do not forget, Amsterdam was, behind London and Paris, the third biggest city in Europe, and one of the most dynamic in the world. During the Dutch Republic, Amsterdam had just as many whores as the other two cities, at least according to contemporaries (Van de Pol 1996). Estimates suggest Amsterdam counted about 800 whores with a population of 200,000 at the end of the seventeenth century, a population of which the majority was female. Of the foreign whores, most originated from coastal areas of northern Germany (De Graeve 2010). Dominating the European charts, it is justified to say prostitution in Amsterdam was endemic.
"En ce bordeau ou tenons nostre estat"
—
'In this brothel where we are established'
(Villon 1461)
5.4. how prostitution was organized
The feast of Sinterklaas ‘Saint Nicholas’ is popular in the Netherlands, and in different variations also on several of the Wadden Sea islands of the region of Ostfriesland in Germany. Saint Nicholas is also known as Νικόλαος ὁ Θαυματουργός ‘Nikolaos the Wonderworker’. He was of Greek descent from the city of Myra in Asia Minor, what is Turkey today. Nicholas lived between AD 270 and 343. Furthermore, faithful Saint Nicholas is, among others, the Catholic patron of sailors and fishermen. His family were, namely, wealthy fishermen. Nicholas’ feast day is on the 5th-6th of December. This date traditionally marked the end of the sailing season for Frisian seafarers. In medieval Frisia, faithful Saint Nicholas of Myra was one of the most popular saints (Bremmer 2021). Not coincidentally the Basilica of Saint Nicholas stands at the (former) quays of Amsterdam.
Less well-known is that Saint Nicholas is also the patron of unmarried women, virgins, and prostitutes. Legend has it that once upon a time, there were three sisters who wanted to get married but were too poor to save enough money for their dowries. Their poverty and despair were about to lead them into prostitution. Now, Saint Nicholas enters the scene. For three nights, he secretly throws a purse full of money through the window. For every girl, a purse. On the third night, however, he gets caught but instructs the young women not to tell anyone (Shore 2019). Now you know why giving (chocolate) money is part of the tradition of the feast of Sinterklaas to this day.
Faithful Saint Nicholas, you might say, is the embodiment of the theme of this blog post, namely sailors and the sea, women and prostitution.
Unfortunately, miracle worker Saint Nicholas was not able to prevent all poor and unmarried women from prostituting themselves, recognizing, of course, that poverty is but one of the reasons for women to become sex workers. And giving money made of chocolate does not help either. The flipside is that, because of his shortcomings as a patron of unmarried poor women, we could write this blog post, offering a peek into, in our opinion, a remarkable history.
At the beginning, in the sixteenth century, prostitution was still predominantly a personal affair of women prostituting themselves. The ZZP'ers, zelfstandige zonder personeel 'self-employed without personnel' of the sixteenth century. Officially, with the arrival of Protestantism brothels were closed. Protestantism was harsh on all types of hoererij ‘whoring’. Whoring encompassed all forms of sex outside marriage, and no difference was made between paid and unpaid sex. It was all named whoring. A clear social picture with little room for shades of grey, which, of course, had little to do with reality.
Prostitution, as a paid sex service, continued to find its way on the streets and via disreputable taverns where whores first of all stimulated guests to drink and eat as much as possible and to be treated with drinks and food as well. A percentage of these earnings was paid out to the women. Whores pretended to drink along with the customer, but secretly threw their drinks offered onto the floor. Floors of these taverns were covered with sand to absorb the purposely spilled wine and beer so the guests would not notice. Of course, if a guest wanted to have sex and still was not too drunk to be up for it, the girl would take the john to her room. Perhaps by then he was so drunk, she could suffice with only a hand job. Anyhow, by then the whoremonger better had enough ready cash on him.
Although prostitution was prohibited from the end of the sixteenth century, soon it became clear the authorities were fighting a losing battle. Brothels reappeared publicly, but also speelhuizen ‘music halls’ and bad taverns and inns where one could find prostitutes as well. Speelhuizen, also called musicos, with names like Jonckr Pover, Meniste Bruyloft, Pakhuis, Wijnvat, Papatie Noorman, Ryck Bancket, Joode Tryn, or Scheele Kaet, were a typical feature of Amsterdam. Halls where music was played by a small ensemble and where people came dancing and drinking. An ensemble of a more upmarket place consisted of a harpsichord, violin, and bass. Simpler places only offered a violin player. Besides music and dancing, you could find prostitutes, too. A prostitute would take her client to a whorehouse, since at speelhuizen no, or few, rooms were available. Speelhuizen and strumpets 'prostitutes' were a real attraction for tourists in Amsterdam. Not much has changed, perhaps.
Due to the fact a visit to these houses was not considered dishonourable, speelhuizen enjoyed much popularity. The music entertainment was a façade, and these halls, therefore, were not considered a brothel. According to the Devil in the book "Amsterdamsch Hoerdom" ('Amsterdam whoredom'), see below, speelhuizen once started as Mennonite weddings, where people could have a truly decent good time. Only later whores were taken to these feasts.
't Amsterdamsch Hoerdom — A blockbuster in its time already, was the book ‘Menifte Bruyloften of ‘t Amfterdamfch Hoerdom’ (Mennonite Weddings or the Amsterdam Whoredom), published in the year 1681. It had many reprints. The writer remained anonymous. Therefore, let's call him John. The story is about the Devil, known as myn Leidsman (my leadsman), that appears in a dream of the main character, and shows him all the bad inns, brothels, houses of prostitution, and music halls of Amsterdam. Something the main character only 'heard' about during his travels, ahum. The book describes everything very realistic and in great detail, and, therefore, is a very informative and much quoted source of historians. Back then, it was especially a great source for tourists visiting the infamous city, and not so much for historians – the chapter Entertainment & Drinking of a Lonely Planet city guide, to know where to go for fun and, indeed, more.
In one of the taverns the main character and his Leidsman visit, they observe the innkeeper promoting his red wine and whores to two guests. They were two Vrieffche schippers ‘Frisian skippers’ sitting together with two juffertjes ‘whores’. The way the innkeeper advertised his red wine, and implicitly his whores, was as follows:
“ […] want fe is foo foet als fuiker, fe ruikt als kaneel, en fmaakt niet anders, als of je al de lekkernyen des wereldtste gelyk in de mond had.”
[…] because she as sweet as sugar, she smells like cinnamon, and tastes no different, as if you have all the delights of the world in your mouth at once).
The two Frisians immediately ordered two extra cups of wine for the whores.
In one of the dialogues between the Devil and the main character, an explanation is given why prostitution cannot and should not be banned:
“Wel, fou ‘t niet beter wefen, vroeg ik, dat men fe altemaal uitbande, gelijk men in andere Steden doet? De weereld, antwoordde mij Leidsman, is met de Bybel in de hand niet te regeeren, andere fteden, daar men geen hoeren gedoogen wil, hebben fulk een toeloop van Vreemdelingen en van Vaarens-gezellen niet […] die zich dagelycks, als fe aan de wal zyn, zat en vol zuipen en die al foo rouw en onbuigfaam zyn [..] om een grooter kwaad voor te komen, te weeten, ’t aanranden en fchenden van eerlijke Vrouwen”
Well, would it not be better, I asked, if they were banned al together, like they do in other Cities? The world, my Leadsmen replied, cannot be ruled with the Bible in one’s hand, other cities, where whores are not accepted, do not have this many Foreigners and Seafarers […] who every day, when they are ashore, get drunk and who therefore are rough and hard to handle […] to prevent an even greater evil, namely, assaulting and violating of honourable Women
From around the mid-seventeenth century, prostitution became a professional women’s affair. By this, we mean prostitution had become a specialized branch, almost completely managed by women as well. They were procuresses, brothel keepers, whore madams, or bawds. It is also from this time that prostitution and fornication were being distinguished as separate things. As mentioned, until then, all forms of sex outside marriage and other indecent behaviour fell under the umbrella term of whoring. Albeit the business was dominated by procuresses, procurers or pimps also existed, in Amsterdam slang called a pol (Thuijs 2020).
Prostitutes, often no more than two, lived in a whorehouse owned by a madam. Here, the prostitutes received their clients, and the brothel keeper also provided safety. Part of the household could just as well be the husband of the bawd, but he would have his own job outside the house and, in general, played no role in his wife’s business. About 80 per cent of all whorehouses were run by women. Until the second half of the eighteenth century, these houses continued to be primarily small enterprises. The eighteenth century was a worse period for prostitutes, too. There was more poverty and men were getting involved in the prostitution branch, and their incomes decreased (Van de Pol 1996).
Besides prostitutes in whorehouses, there were also kruishoeren ‘streetwalkers’. The old Dutch verb kruisen meant to 'walk/to stroll' and is related to the English verb ‘to cruise’. The word hoer means ‘whore’. So, cruising whores. A street where these hookers operated during the night was named kruisbaan. Their services were provided in porches, parks, and alleys. In the city of The Hague, the wooded area of the Haagse Bos was a popular 'love shack'.
High-end courtesans, another form of prostitution in the early modern period, were scarce. The only place in the Dutch Republic where these high-end prostitutes had a market was in The Hague because of the presence of the international diplomatic corps and expats (Van de Pol 1996). The rest of the Republic was a bourgeois society with only a modest court life. The closest thing to a royal court were the small palaces of the stadtholders of the House of Orange. Margaretha Geertruida Zelle (1876-1917), also known as Mata Hari, is the most famous courtesan, albeit of more recent times, and originating from the province Friesland as well. She lived, among others, in The Hague and Paris. Paris at the turn of the twentieth century is also the setting of the musical Moulin Rouge! Moulin Rouge is a cabaret, a house of bohemians, revolutionaries, artists, actors, and whores, too. The plot within the plot of this musical is a gangster who tries to seduce a woman who is in love with a poor sailor. Yes, mariners and prostitutes, again. If you have the possibility, buy a ticket at the Al Hirschfield Theatre on Broadway in Manhattan, and see the show.
To remain competitive, a whorehouse needed to ‘refresh its merchandise' periodically to keep regular clientele coming and to attract new ones (De Graeve 2010). For this, whores were exchanged among houses, within towns, and between towns. Girls were, in fact, sold because a new madam would pay the outstanding debt of the girl to the former madam. Rotations of whores happened every three to four months. This practice was especially prevalent from the late seventeenth century through the full eighteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, this was referred to as white slavery. It became a moral panic, and people petitioned the government to halt this. Advised by the abolitionists, it led to restrictive policies against procuring and trafficking of women, and brothels were shut down. Driving prostitution underground again. History repeating.
As noted earlier, prostitutes mainly worked in the garment and textile industry before, and, to a lesser extent, as former cleaning maids. This profile was applicable throughout the seventeenth century until around 1720. Not so much housemaids of earlier professions. Housemaids were often better paid and enjoyed accommodation, more or less the best job a lower-class girl could obtain. The average age of a whore was between 21 and 25 years. Whores older than 30 years were a unicum. An exception to the rule was Marrij Pieters, alias Noordse Marrie 'northern Mary', who, at the age of 48, still walked in the alley Jan de Vriesesteeg, a streetwalking zone in Amsterdam, in the year 1709. At the age of 54, Marrij was apprehended again. With that, she is the oldest documented sex worker traced in the city records (Thuijs 2020, Dussen 2020). Of the prostitutes apprehended in Amsterdam, only about 20 percent were born in Amsterdam. The rest came from other towns in the Republic or from Scandinavia and coastal Germany (Van de Pol 2010). At the same time, Dutch and German women were working as prostitutes in England as well (Cordingly 2001). Prostitutes in the early modern period tended to come from disrupted family environments, such as domestic violence, death of a family member, or abandonment by the husband (Pluskota 2017).
During the seventeenth century, bordello paintings called ‘bordeeltjes’ were very popular in the Republic. Typically, these merry paintings depicted a whore, a procuress, and, of course, a male client. The whore was always beautiful and cheerful, the procuress was always old, wearing a white head cover and eager to make money, and the whoremonger was always foolish and drinking alcohol. Again, cunning, coquettish women seduced innocent, defenceless men. Oysters and lutes, symbols of sex, were often added to avoid any misunderstanding regarding what the jolly scene was actually about. However, these duplicitous portrayals of prostitutes had nothing to do with their true profile and nature, as briefly outlined above (Stamler 2016). Different explanations are given by scholars as to why bordello paintings were in high demand. We guess it was simply early porn in disguise.
'bordeeltjes' or bordello paintings, seventeenth century
With the ‘professionalization’ of prostitution from around the mid-seventeenth century, whores became more and more dependent on madams and other whoremasters. It is also from this time that to be an attractive and desirable prostitute, a girl needed to possess specific clothing. This was fanciful, colourful garments with flower motifs, and thus very expensive. Painted cloth was expensive. The masses were clothed in grey and even commonly referred to as het grauw 'the grim' by the class of regents in the seventeenth century. Whores imitated with their clothes the fashion of higher-class women. Standard garments of a whore were a black tabbaard ‘tabard’ and a colourful samaar ‘chamarre’, a loose outer garment made of silks and satins. Also, a whore needed to have makeup, something that was adopted from the theatre. They whitened their faces, gave their cheeks a red blush, and painted some black mouches on their faces. Wigs too, were often worn. Lastly, a whore had to pay rent for the room, which was about half of her weekly earnings. The whore madam would rent her whores beautiful clothes, jewellery, and provide makeup.
Additional to all the costs above, girls were confronted with expenditures on unwanted pregnancies, a continuous risk for prostitutes, and expenditures resulting from recovering from venereal and other diseases. Care, food, bed, etc., delivered by the madam while being sick had to be reimbursed. You do not get something for nothing, as the saying goes. Result: a whore was deeply indebted to her madam, thus fully dependent on her. Never able to repay her madam. Mechanismes that sounds familiar still to what happens today, maybe?
Clientele of whores in Amsterdam, and other seaports, were not only sailors, people from the countryside, and tourists, but also skippers and barge hands of inland river navigation, the latter even in quite significant numbers. The overwhelming share of johns in Amsterdam was, however, sailors. The Dutch Republic counted between 50,000 and 60,000 mariners working on ships, be it ships of the VOC, the WIC, cargo shipping to the Baltic Sea, the British Isles, and Scandinavia, the Arctic whaling industry, the navy, or privateering.
Sailors and prostitutes were very much connected to each other not only because sailors, when they returned from the seven seas, spent all their money on drinking parties and whores, but also because brothels themselves fulfilled a central role in the communication between sailors, wives, and family members back in patria, the fatherland (Van de Pol 2011). Oral messages and letters on the weal and woe of sailors and family were communicated through sailors back and forth via brothels. Since most sailors were illiterate, whoremasters in brothels could organize messages to be written down. Going to a brothel, therefore, was the best place for a sailor’s wife to learn news about her husband in foreign lands, like going to the post office. It was not only brothels that were important places for overseas information; likewise, lodgings and inns (De Wit 2010).
Ties between prostitutes and sailors were so strong that sailors often gave personal valuables to whore madams for safekeeping while they were at sea. As mentioned earlier, sailors regularly picked their brides from a spinhuis ‘correctional institute’, also indicating the close relationship between both, non-honourable, worlds. An additional note is that it was not always about sex. From various studies, we know that sailors and whores surprisingly often had a pseudo marriage, meaning sailors would return to the same whore once back in the fatherland, and both would live as a couple for the time the sailor was on leave (Van de Pol 1996, Cordingly 2001). So, sailors, like most people, also had the need for traditional female companionship, which they practically were not able to have. Almost human, those seamen and sex workers.
5.5. alternatives to prostitution in order to survive
As set out above, lower-class women had in several aspects a more vulnerable position in north-western Europe during the early modern period, when compared to men or to other parts of Europe. Limited honourable jobs were available; most jobs were reserved for men, wages were much lower when compared to those of men, and, on average, they married at an older age than elsewhere in Europe. In general, women had to take care of themselves between sixteen and twenty-five years of age. Furthermore, women in this coastal region of Europe migrated a lot—towards the towns and cities to earn an income. All in all, lower-class women could end up away from home, alone without a social network, and without income (Dekker & Van de Pol 1989). Involvement in criminality was sometimes a desperate way out, also explaining the significant share of women in crime.
Assertive Friesche Aefje — A young woman who rebelled against her desperate social position was Friesche Aefje (‘Frisian Aefje’), born in 1610 and originating from the town of Dokkum in the province of Friesland. An outspoken and unmarried woman, she had moved to the city of Amsterdam. When she was 18 years old, Aefje, also Aef, showed up in the city's criminal records for the first time. After that, a series of convictions for prostitution, robbery, fencing, etc., followed, mostly with banishment, flogging, and branding as sentences. Aefje was always very clear and explicit to her high-end judges, namely that she would never respect their verdicts not to return to Amsterdam. One of her cases attracted much attention in those days. It took place in 1631.
Aefje was heavily pregnant when she turned up in the city despite her previous banishment. She purposely had herself arrested so she could deliver her child under relatively favourable conditions, with food and shelter in the spinhuis (‘women’s prison’). Moreover, during her public trial, she boldly and falsely accused one of the schepen (‘judges’), the influential Pieter Jansz. Hooft, of being the father of her unborn child. Demonstrating a courage that was unheard of in those days.
Aefje had prepared her acquisition carefully. According to her fabricated story, schepen Pieter Jansz. Hooft had taken her to a little arch one night where they had sex for money, and it was then that she had become pregnant. For the court, this was reason to torture her to find out if it was true, she said. Also, a fellow inmate betrayed her. Her lies became true. Not long after her conviction, she managed to break out of the spinhuis.
In 1633, Aefje was convicted yet again. During this trial, Aefje made it clear that for women like her there was no future, and the path of crime was the only alternative. In 1634, 1638, 1641, and 1644, Aefje appeared in the criminal records once more. After that, her fate is unknown (Thuijs 2020).
Wives of sailors in the service of the VOC or WIC had an additional challenge, namely that their men would be away for sometimes two years. In the meantime, they had to survive without a husband helping the household with income, too. Moreover, many sailors died of illnesses or were shipwrecked. Many sailors' women became widows. Confirmation that their husband had perished often came late or never at all. Confirmation of death was a prerequisite to receive a modest allowance from the company.
So, besides criminality and prostitution—or finding a rich husband as the Dutch Minister of Housing, Hugo de Jonge, recommend a young women (2023)—what were the other options?
selling souls
An intriguing, women-dominated business was the recruitment of sailors in the city of Amsterdam. These women were known as zielenverkoopsters, literally translated as ‘soul brokers,’ and were wives or widows of sailors, or former prostitutes. It was a trait specific to Amsterdam. As we have seen earlier in the case of the port of Harlingen in the province of Friesland, normally it was male sollicititeurs, 'recruiters,' who organized sailors to man ships. Zielenverkoopsters were owners of so-called bad boarding houses or bad inns, where young men stayed who wanted to sign on at the VOC to sail to dangerous and debauched apenland, ‘monkey land,’ as the East Indies was dubbed among sailors back then.
An aspirant sailor had to incur debts for food and lodging while staying in the city before he could embark on a ship. The landlady of the boarding house, also called slaapbaas, 'sleeping boss,' or volkhouder, 'folk keeper,' provided in advance food and accommodation. She organized, via a network of agents, for her guest to be signed on a ship. In return, she received from the VOC a so-called transport ceel. The value of a transport ceel was normally 150 guilders, meaning a sailor would not, in practice, earn any money for the next eighteen months at sea (Bruijn 2016). With the transport ceel, a warrant, she, or whomever would bear the ceel over time, was entitled to be reimbursed by the VOC out of the sailor’s salary for the advance lodging and food once—very importantly—the sailor concerned had returned. That could be years later, if at all.
Ceels themselves were transacted, too, pending the (possible) return of the sailor. The ceels were traded for lower prices than the official value, given the uncertainty that you could ever claim the money somewhere in the future. Sailors could die or desert the VOC in the meantime. The worth of transport ceels was, therefore, subject to speculation. News or rumours concerning wars, piracy, weather, or diseases overseas influenced the value of ceels. Typically, ceels were sold at a price of 70 or 80 guilders (Van der Pol 1996, Bruijn 2016). In other words, calculations based on harsh life experience taught that about 50 percent of the sailors would not make it back to collect their gage. Sailors died of scurvy, typhus, yellow fever, accidents, and shipwreck (Cordingly 2001). Once the sailor had died, the transport ceel lost its value and was considered quaad geworden 'turned bad'. But if, however, the sailor did make it back to patria, and you had bought his transport ceel for maybe about half price, you made a nice profit.
The Dutch word ziel for ‘soul’ sounds much like ceel. Hence, these women were called zielenverkoopster ‘soul brokers’. This practice of selling transport ceels lasted well into the eighteenth century. If you come to think of it, the zielenverkoopsters were selling souls to the ferryman. Check our blog post Rowing souls of the dead to Britain: the Ferryman of Solleveld about another ferryman, south of Amsterdam.
Women running lodging houses and inns for prospective sailors were not necessarily all zielenverkoopsters. If the sailor could pay his debt from the two months handgeld 'earnest money', a transport ceel was not needed. The reason why many of the lodgings and inns were run by sailors' wives had to do with the simple fact that the income of their husbands was in general not enough to live on and that it was too irregular and uncertain. As said, a husband at sea could die due to sickness, shipwreck, war, or for other reasons not be in touch for months or years. A social position of sailors' women referred to as 'occupational widowhood'. Additionally, contrary to other married women, women married to a sailor were often not legally incompetent after marriage. The husband sailor could have drawn up a notarial deed, a so-called akte van procuratie 'deed of procuration', in which he mandated his wife to dispose of money and goods and act in legal matters. In other words, enabling the sailor's wife to run a business and manage the household in his long absence (De Wit 2005, 2010).
women in masquerade
At the end of the sixteenth century, the phenomenon of women cross-dressing as men appeared in Europe, but by far the most cases are found in north-western Europe and especially in the Dutch Republic, England, and Germany. This tradition of travesty continued until around the year 1800 in the Republic, and a bit longer in England and the United States. France picked up the tradition at the end of the eighteenth century, with many women enrolling as men in the revolutionary army. In the nineteenth century, the tradition of female travesty more or less suddenly disappeared (Dekker & Van de Pol 1989).
Because many jobs were reserved for men and lower-class women often had no social (family) network to fall back on, another option to survive was to disguise themselves as men. Research shows that prostitutes and female cross-dressers had a similar age and background. Disguised as men, women could gain access to male privileges and freedoms. They could try to enrol in the army, the navy, or as sailors for the different multinational corporations sailing to the East and the West. So, many young women did. Below is a sea shanty originating from the eighteenth century that Dutch people can sing to this day.
Daar was laatst een meisje loos, Die wou gaan varen, die wou gaan varen, Daar was laatst een meisje loos, Die wou gaan varen als lichtmatroos.
There was recently a girl of loose moral, | Who wanted to go sailing, who wanted to go sailing, | There was recently a girl of loose moral | Who wanted to go sailing as ordinary seaman.
Most women impersonating men had had a troublesome youth and often lost one or both of their parents. Unbearable situations with step-mothers and domestic conflicts or violence being part part of their youth, are frequently encountered in the archives. It forced them to leave their family and hometown to seek a better future elsewhere. A third of the women pretending to be men identified in the Republic were migrants, mostly from the cities of Emden and Hamburg, and from the region of Westphalia.
There are many cases known where women have been unmasked as women and have been brought to court. Pretending to be a man as such was not considered dishonourable, but it was against the law of the Almighty Creator. Women could be revealed only within days after they commenced living as a man, but there are also cases testifying to women functioning for six years on end as sailors without being discovered. Pretending to be a man demanded more than wearing men's clothes and cutting their hair short, i.e., just below the ears. These women also had to behave like men, and when being a sailor, that meant showing rough behaviour, singing, cursing, visiting brothels, and drinking a lot. Yes, they even had liaisons with women to mask their true gender. Also, these women had to be able to perform heavy work not inferior to men.
Interestingly, some women serving in the army as male soldiers gained fame after they unmasked themselves. A famous eighteenth-century woman is Hannah Snell (1723-1792) from Worcester, England, who wrote an autobiography about her adventures going through life as a man for many years. She allegedly married a Dutch sailor named James Summs. He turned out to spend all their money on—here we go again—whores. When Hannah was seven months pregnant, her husband left her. Hannah's child died shortly after. After this tragedy, Hannah tried to find Summs to seek revenge. She ended up in Coventry, and here, in 1745, she joined the army as a man under the name James or Jemmy Grey. She served in the army for a duration of between four months and two years. In 1747, she joined the navy under the same name, James Grey. A year later, at Cuddalore in India, she was wounded during battle and was hospitalized for a year. After serving some more time in the navy, she returned to England in 1750 and was paid out by the navy. Only then did she reveal in a tavern to her comrades who and what she was, with the words:
"Jemmy Grey will cast his skin like a snake and become a new creature. In a word, I am as much a woman as my mother ever was, and my real name is Hannah Snell."
Hannah died in a mental hospital in 1972. Twelve years before she had been declared insane. The part of her biography being married and her pregnancy might be fictional (Stark 1996).
Another famous autobiography is that of Mary Read. Mary married a Dutchman as well and set up a tavern in the town of Breda in the province of Noord Brabant, but her husband died soon after. She decided to join the VOC as a sailor. Her ship was captured by pirates, and eventually, she became a notorious pirate herself. Yet another very vengeful female pirate was Jeanne de Belleville from Poitou in France, widow of Olivier IV de Clissonde (1300-1359). She possessed a fleet and harrassed the French at sea. Her ships carried a black sail with a white lily. Her nickname was The Sea Tigress. Besides Hannah, Mary, and Jeanne, there are many more. Also think of the sailor women Mary Lacy and Mary Ann Talbot (Grundner 2008). Check the notes at the end of this blog post for many more names of women disguising as men in the early modern period.
Not a cross-dresser, but with a highly successful maritime career, is Laskarina Pinotsi, commonly known as Laskarina Bouboulina (1771-1825). She was an admiral of the Greek navy and a heroine of the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire in 1821. Her death was less honourable, namely during a family feud. We know Laskarina is not from the North Sea coast, but deserves to be mentioned nevertheless.
Besides seeking employment as cross-dressers as sailors or soldiers, women who entered a life of crime often dressed as men, too. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the cities of the Dutch Republic experienced a criminal subculture with its own language and nicknames, in which women played a prominent role (Dekker & Van de Pol 1989). As mentioned before, between a third and a half of all crimes in Amsterdam were committed by women. And many of these women were wearing trousers, partly as a disguise, partly as an expression. Travesty and criminality are not far apart from each other and share a violation of ethics in common. Not only in cities were women active as criminals; they also participated in criminal gangs, including the infamous Bokkenrijders 'Buckriders' in the south of the Republic, dressed as men and as cruel as men.
Except for better job opportunities, patriotism, and being active in the criminal underworld, the motives of women impersonating men could also be of a personal and intimate nature. It could also be to preserve their virginity, which in those days was a very important value, an almost sacred status. By going through life as men, these women could avoid being married and preserve their virginity. And do not forget, in Protestant society, women did not have the option to enter a monastery as nuns anymore, as they did when the country was Catholic. And, of course, it could also be love. Young sweethearts trying to stay with their lover and follow him abroad at sea, for example, sometimes as stowaways on a ship. Like Stijntje, the fiancée of coxswain Gerrit de Veer.
De Veer was part of the crew of the second expedition into the Arctic to find the Northeast Passage in 1596, a mission led by the Frisian seafarer and cartographer Willem Barentsz. This expedition got stuck on the island of Novaya Zemlya, and, albeit barely, most of the crew survived the harsh winter. In the spring of 1597, the men rowed back to the mainland of Russia. When, in the year before, the ship of Willem Barentsz with coxswain Gerrit de Veer did not return, Stijntje decided to search for her fiancé in the Arctic herself. She managed to get as a stowaway on board a ship that sailed to Archangelsk—the trading port on the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Miraculously, it was here, in the icy north, that Stijntje and Gerrit were reunited after more than a year (Walda 1996).
A final reason concerning personal motives for cross-dressing we mention was homosexuality. Somehow trying to live a couple in the conservative early-modern society. Sexuality between women was very different from today. A woman loving another woman meant she had to reject her gender. Having such feelings for another women implied she actually must be a man. Sex was phallocentric. If no phallus was involved in the deed, it simply was not sex. If a woman had feelings for someone of the same gender, she therefore must be a man, or at least aspired to be one. Lesbian women, therefore, often doubted their gender. This early-modern understanding of sexuality made travesty in these cases a kind of psychological or mental 'correction' (Dekker & Van de Pol 1989).
emigrating to the colonies
Another option to make a living, albeit only possible for a few, was to emigrate to one of the colonies of the VOC, like the New Netherland colony in America. This could be an option for both man and women if for some reason they had lost their honour and needed to start with a new slate.
A remarkable woman who perhaps emigrated because of such reasons was Grietje Reyniers (1602-1669). She was the wife of Anthony Jansen, or Jansz. van Salee, i.e., the city of Salé in modern Morocco, and who had the alias The Turk. Anthony was half Moorish. Some say he was the son of a pirate because of his nickname, since Salé was a notorious stronghold of the Corsairs. In 1630, the couple emigrated to New Amsterdam, modern Manhattan, New York. Here, Grietje started a tavern, and she also engaged in prostitution. For some time, she was even the mistress of the Director of New Amsterdam, Wouter van Twiller.
There were also complaints filed at the town council about her offensive behaviour. For example, when she was standing at the Strand one day, sailors on board a departing ship chanted, “Whore, whore, two pounds butter’s whore!” She blatantly responded by turning her bottom towards the men, lifting her petticoat, slapping her backside, and shouting, “Breathe me in there!” Indeed, the seventeenth-century version of 'kiss my ass.' Of course, nobody was indignant over the sailors' offensive chanting.
Centuries before, a Frisian woman did exactly the same at the Battle of Schoterzijl, also the Battle of Kuinre in the year 1396, part of the Friso-Hollandic Wars between 1256-1422. She too, showed her bottom, this time to the enemy (Janse 1993, Van Hezel & Pol 2005). This is the account of chronicler Jean Froissart (ca. 1337-1405):
As soon as this woman arrived there, she turned around. She pulled up her clothes, that is to say, her dress and her chemise, and showed her behind to the men of Hainaut, Holland, Zeeland, and to the whole army, to anyone who wanted to see it, while she shouted some words—I don't know exactly which—with which she wanted to say in her own language: "You are welcome here!"
Another testimony about Grietje concerns when she had given birth to a child. Grietje’s first question to the midwife was whom the child resembled; a certain man called Andries Hudde, or her own husband? The midwife answered:
“If you do not know who the father is how should I know? However, the child is somewhat brown.”
In the year 1639, Grietje and The Turk were expelled from New Amsterdam, and again it was time for them to move on in life. They settled on Long Island Waterfront and began farming. For long, their place was known as Turk’s Plantation, on modern Cropsey Avenue in Brooklyn, near modern Bath Beach.
More women in the New Netherland colony owned a tavern, like Maria Goosen and Lysbeth Cornelisz. Also, Maria Goosen was banned, in this case, from the town of Beverwijck, what is modern Albany. The reason for her being expelled was that she had been selling booze to an Indian woman, which was prohibited (Lucas 2021).
A last remark on the New Netherland colony, the word ‘hooker’ originates from the neighbourhood of New Amsterdam named Corlaers Hoek, with hoek meaning ‘corner area’. Later in the nineteenth century, the name was written as Corlears Hook, and it was a vice and crime area next to the shipyards, ferry terminals, iron works, and coal dumps in Lower East Side New York, including many brothels and streetwalkers. Indeed, hookers. The Hook, as commonly abbreviated, was a wild area known to sailors all over the world. Find more information about the New Netherland colony in our blog post History is written by the Victors—a story of the credits.
5.6. crossing borders and conventions
With a certain degree of contempt, lower-class women in the early modern Dutch Republic were often perceived by contemporaries as witty and assertive. What many failed to recognize, however, was that female sex workers, criminals, and cross-dressers were, in their own way, avant-gardists — transgressing unjust social boundaries and conservative conventions. They moved fluidly between classes, between obedience and rebellion, between male and female roles, and between heterosexual and same-sex dynamics. Dressed as men in trousers while committing crimes, and returning to dresses in daily life, these women lived on the fringes of cultural acceptability (Stark 1996). Travesty, in this context, was profoundly subversive — turning the social order upside down (Dekker & Van de Pol 1989).
First, prostitutes defied class-based dress codes by adorning themselves like upper-class women. Second, their clientele often came from higher, even respectable social ranks. Third, the use of make-up further blurred social lines — originally reserved for male stage actors, cosmetics were later adopted by prostitutes, perhaps inspired as well by exotic images and stories from Asia. Fourth, as previously mentioned, women were responsible for a significant share of urban crime. Finally, those who lived as men — thereby implicitly claiming equal rights — represented the ultimate transgression of social norms. A struggle modern society is still far from resolving.
A possible sixth element that challenged traditional conventions is the way prostitution indirectly contributed to the empowerment of women. By earning their own money through sex work—and (implicitly) asserting that, as women, they had control over their own bodies and sexuality—these women laid a foundation for independence. Having an autonomous sexuality as a woman has always been, and still is, difficult for many societies to accept. It has led to the containment and stigmatization of women, especially of prostitutes. Dismantling long-standing negative stigmas surrounding sex work is essential for breaking down broader restrictive and inferior ideas about women in general. Ideas such as women carrying original sin, being a necessary evil, idle and prone to corruption, disgraced by nature, inherently perverse, or dangerous seductresses to men—all of which have persisted for centuries. This blog post has touched upon many of these prejudices. And yet, it was precisely prostitutes and female cross-dressers who played a role in breaking down these toxic frames. Not whores, but heroines.
However, in most parts of the world, selling sex and working as a sex worker are still not recognized as legitimate forms of women’s labour. Instead, sex work is often viewed as a private service or a duty owed to men (Blanchette 2017). Even today, an overwhelming number of countries ban the sale of sex, the provision of intimacy services, or the operation of brothels. As Madam Reggie Gamble of San Francisco’s infamous Barbary Coast vice district put it in 1917—when the city council attempted to clean up the area and eradicate prostitution (Anderson 2016):
"You don't do us any good by attacking us. Why don't you attack those conditions?"
And let’s take this opportunity to finally put to rest the misleading cliché that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. Of course, it is not—after all, men have always had to pay sex workers with money earned from some other profession, money that was often not invested in the care of their own families.
6. A Farewell to Bums, Bars, and Brothels
Shipping and sailors shaped the port city of Rotterdam in the province of Zuid Holland: een filister stad 'a philistine city' (Slauerhoff 1920). A modestly sized city that is the world’s sixth biggest harbour and number one in Europe. Prostitution was part of its identity, especially from the nineteenth century onwards, as red-light districts developed, taking advantage of the opportunities seamen offered when it came to paid sex. Zandstraat and Schiedamsedijk streets were the first rosse buurten ‘red-light districts’.
After the destruction of the city in the Second World War, prostitution moved to Katendrecht, an area nicknamed De Kaap. Here, a Chinese community, preserving much of its own culture and identity, had developed as a result of the many Chinese ships plying the harbours of Roffa. Unfortunately, De Kaap became infested with drugs, vice, dodgy bars, and klappers, the local term for a whorehouse. In the early ‘80s, the city council decided to close all brothels in De Kaap. Whores and sex houses got dispersed over the city (Koolen 2014).
Besides a tough city administration, the number of sailors decreased, too, having a negative impact on the prostitution labour market as well. These days, only a handful of mariners is needed to operate even the largest of ocean vessels. Moreover, the amount of time allowed to seamen for shore leave when the ship is offloading and loading is much shorter now. Docking fees in a seaport are exceptionally high. So, mooring times are being minimized. Moreover, port areas have been fenced off since the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The estimated 1.9 million seafarers who work on the seven seas today have become practically invisible (Steenhuis & Teunissen 2023). Simple sailors mostly come from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Eastern Europe. They earn low wages and their working conditions are a great concern for the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF). All these developments result in too few men and too little time in port towns in terms of enough demand for sex.
Because of these developments, classic harbour saloons have disappeared as well. Bars and cafés where sailors, dockers, truckers, business men, and bums used to meet. In 1996, a group of journalists, businessmen, local politicians, and one maritime doctor, founded the Slauerhoff Genootschap ter instandhouding van Rotterdamse Havenkroegen (‘Slauerhoff Society to preserve Rotterdam Harbour Bars’). Already in 2001, the society dissolved itself because no typical harbour bar was left anymore. Café De Ballentent supposedly is the last classic harbour tavern of Rotterdam. There is, to our opinion another one left, namely café ‘t Zielhoes 'sluice house' in the hamlet of Noordpolderzijl in the upper north of the province of Groningen, a former smuggler’s haven. Classic fake, red-Persian cloths on tables included. We welcome names of any other harbour saloon that survived along the North Sea coasts of the region of Flanders, the Netherlands, and north-western Germany.
Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (1898-1936), after whom the short-lived society was named, was a Frisian poet and writer. Born in the town of Leeuwarden, just like Mata Hari, whom we encountered before, he was by profession a medical doctor and roamed the world’s oceans as a ship surgeon. He suffered from tuberculosis, which he did not treat; the reason why the talented Slauerhoff died at an early age. His poems are loaded with themes such as seaports, the foreign, decay, death, and whores.
Below, in concluding this blog post—or long-read—a poem of Slauerhoff called De Vluchtelinge (‘The Refugee’), about a whore who wants to escape her misery and fate, but cannot.
Soms weent zij uit: dat zij niet meer kan blijven Onbevlekte in verblijven, waar bedreigen Haar offerpijn en floers, waaronder lijven Den Dienst der wreede liefkoozingen bedrijven. ‘k Geloof haar niet, maar neem haar lijfsgewaden. Nog, naakt vernederd, smeekt zij genade Te mogen gaan. Ik spot: “Ga zoo, mijn gade!” En sliep in zekerheid… Zij is gaan waden Door diepe sneeuw en zich aan kuisch ijs wonden. Zij dacht rechtuit te vluchten, liep een ronde: Des morgens aan een muur is zij gevonden, Teruggedragen binnen mijn verblijven, Waar maagden haar bevrozen leden wrijven, Hervoorbereiden voor het feest der lijven.
Sometimes she weeps out loud: she cannot stay anymore | The immaculate in enclosures, where threatening | Her pain of sacrifice and crape, underneath which flesh | Perform the Service of cruel caresses | I do not believe her, but take her flesh-robes. | Still, nakedly humiliated, she begs for mercy | To be let go. I mock: “Go then, my consort!” | And slept knowing… She went wading | Through snow and injured by chaste ice. | She thought to run a straight line, ran a circle: | In the morning, she was found near a wall, | Carried back into my enclosures, | Where maidens rub her frozen limbs, | Re-preparing for the feast of flesh.
(J.J. Slauerhoff)
paintings by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)
"En ce bordeau ou tenons nostre estat"
—
'In this brothel where we are established'
(Villon 1461)
Note 1 — Random list of whores, mainly from America, the Dutch Republic, and England in seventeenth until the nineteenth centuries:
Zeeuwse Aagte, Aaltie de cous coopster, Isabelle Adriansen, Friesche Aef, Maria Agges, Alet, Seeuse Anna, Rotterdamse Anne, Annetie van de Overtoom, Geertruy Lucassen van Apesteyn (nickname Truy Labberlot), Anna Bekkers, Brabants Betkin, juffr. Beuckelaers, Helene du Bois, Louise van den Bossche, Marie de Bouck, Eliza Bowen Jumel, Brechie, Lucy Ann Brady, Julia Brown, Caetje, Eva Campinga, Hendrickie de capmaeckster, Catryn de naeyster, cleijn hoofie (only known by her nickname), Maria Colyn, Rebecca de copster, Marie Livine Corneels, Agniet Cornelis, Stientje Cornelisz, Therese Deon, Philippine Deynaert, Catharine Françoise Diericx, Maria van Dijkhuizen, Helene Dubois, Margriet Elfman, Marianne Eliasz, juffr. Emans, China Emma, Joan Fairmanners, Hester Fonteijn, Margriet Fonteijn, Marie Fonteine, Elisabeth Freriks (nickname Noordse Louise), Marie Henriette Gerards, Marri Gerrits, Celia Geuseramos, Gode for Eve, Jacoba de Graaf (nickname Schele Coba), Sibilla Gramsbergen, Long Grete, Derktje Groenewoud, juffr. Groenhoven, Lijsbeth de Groot, Elisabeth Hagtmans, Caatje Harmens, Catrijn Hancock, Harhopsasa, Anna Harstens, juffr. Heerings, Marie Heggers, Femmetje Hendricks, Wyntje Hendriks, Elisabeth Henninckhuijsen, Jacoba van de Heyden, Marie Joanne Heysse, Fanny Hill, Marie Catharine Hussel, Anne Huybrecht (denied prostituting herself), Marretje Jacobs, Jannetje de wieldraeyersdochter, Aeltje Jans, Lena Jans, Marrij Jans (nickname Besje met de tanden), Christina Jordens, Christina Jorse, Princess Julia, Schotse Katelijne, Kaetie, Wytske Katoen, Geertrui van Keeten, Anne Kerkhove, Joanna Kloppenborgh, Marija de Lange, Flemish Lysbet, Theresia Langemuer, Sophia Laurens, Ceulse Marie, Marie Limbourg, Joanne Loppens (denied prostituting herself), Marie Josephe le Maitre, La grosse Margot, Joanne Maron, Margriet de Meyer, Adeline Miller, Grietje Muylman, Marie Therese De Muynck (denied prostituting herself), Anna Nederman, Marie Joanne van Nieuwenburg, Catrijn Nieuwlant, Antonia Wilhelmina Nijbroek, Damaris Page, Angelique de Paris, Paulijn, Anne Marie Peeters, Johanna Pelt, Marrij Pieters (nickname Noordse Marrie), juffr. Pieternel, Ariaantje Plankman, Jacoba Pluym, juffr. Du Pree, prince neus (only known by her nickname), Marie Josephe Raimbeaux, Therese de Remont, Rensie op Boomsloot, Grietjen Reyniers, Lijsbeth Riesenbrinck, Marie Rossel, Caatje Rykmans, Saartje Samuels, Marie Santé or Santie, Isabelle Brigitte Schabel, Elsie Schilsema, Elsje Schreuders, Margriet Scoonenbou van Hoogendorp, Fijtje Sevenhoven, Ching Shih, Anne Marie Simoens, Moll Stephens, Mietje van der Stiebel, Arendje Storm, Catrijn Straetman, Elisabeth Taphoorn, Alida Tiken, Barbara Tiras, Madaleentje Tobias, Agnes Touhout, La Trécourt, Sara Walense, Lijsbeth Walna, Catryn Warmeling, Maria van Weste, juffr. Weylandt, Cornelia van Wijk, Joanne De Wilde, Maria Williamson, Agnes Willoughby, and Anna Winters.
Louisa Baker (aliases Lucy Brewer, Lucy West, and Eliza Bowen) and Almira Paul are famous whores in literature, but fictional personalities. This same goes, by the way, for the Mary-legend of the nun Beatrijs (Beatrice) in the fourteenth-century Dutch poem. A nun who prostituted herself outside the monastery, prayed to Mary, showed remorse and returned to the monastery, where—miraculously—no-one was aware Beatrijs had been gone for some time.
Note 2 — Random names of whore madams of the (early) modern period:
Wietske Albers, Anna Barkels, Bastiaantje Bongen, Bette Caens, Catryn Christiaans or Catrijn Christiaens (owner of bar and whorehouse De Bogt van Guinee), Moeder Colijn, Mama Engelbregt, Reggie Gamble, Grootma, Trijn Jans, Christina K., Mama Lefeber, Memme Metje, Marij la Motte, Madame Olij, Elisabeth Ottens (nickname Noordse Lijs), Lijsbeth Poll, Neeltje Sijtsma, Madame La Touche, Willemijn Touw, Margriet Valkoen, and Margaretha van uit Vlaanderen.
Note 3 — Random names of women cross-dressing as men, often as sailor or soldier, mainly in England and the Netherlands, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:
De Amazone van de Nieuwendijk, Hendrick Albertsz, Barbara Pieters Adriaens (alias Willem Adriaens), Anna Alders (nickname Wisjewasje), Maria van Antwerpen (aliases Jan van Ant, and Maggiel van Handtwerpen), Annetje Barents (alias Klaas Barends), Stijntje Barents, Johanna Bennius, Antoinette Berg, Claus Bernsen, Maeyken Blomme, Renée Bordereau, Elizabeth Bowden, Cornelia Gerritse van Breugel (alias Cornelis Brugh), Griet met Broek, Aart den Broekman, Lysbet Jacobs de Bruyn, William Brown, Geertruid ter Brugge (nickname La Dragonne), Antje Burger, Christian “Kit” Cavanagh (nicknames Lady Redcoat and Mother Ross), Grietje Claas, Anna Chamberlayne, Jacomijn Cornelis, Cornelia Margriete Croon (alias van Deventer), Johanna Catharina van Cuijlenberg, Christian Davis, Joonas Dirckse, Sara Dircxdr. (alias Salomon Dircxz), Engeltje Dirx, Aal de Dragonder, Marij Dragonder, Geertruid van Duiren, Catalina de Erauso, Anna Maria Everts (alias de Kwee), Jenneke Everts, Catarijn Fiool, (Vrouwtje) Frans, Mary Frith (nickname Moll Cut-purse), Isabella Clara Geelvinck, Willempje Gerrits van Emden, Dirk Ghereytsdochter (nickname Ruyter Dirk), Maria van der Gijsse (alias Claes van der Gijsse), Francina Gunningh Sloet (alias Frans Gunningh Sloet), Johanna Dorothea Heeght (alias Johannes Hegt), Phoebe Hessel, Geertruida Sara Catharin van den Heuvel (alias Jacobus Philippus Vermeijl), Anna Catharina Hilleghering (nicknames Anna de Moffin, and Dikke Anna), Geesje Hoogmeester, Marijtje van den Hove (alias Alemondus van den Hove), Elisabeth Huyser (alias Jan Drop), Anne Jacobs, Jacoba Jacobs (alias Jacob Jacobs), Aeltje Jans (alias Jan Jansse), Anna Jans (alias Jan Jansz), Janneke Jans, Maritgen Jans (alias David Jans), Maeijken Joosten (alias Pieter Verbrugh), Trijn Jurriaens (alias Hendrick Brughman), Petronella van de Kerkhof, Grietje Harmense Knipsaar (alias Dirk Jansen), Johannes Kock, Mary Lacy (alias William Chandler), Catharina Lincken als Catharina Margarethe Linck (alias Cornelius Hubsch), Francijntje van Lint, Hans Lose, Margarita, Marinos the Monk, Johanna Martens, Anne McLean, Maria Elisabeth Meening, Maria ter Meetelen, Ann Mills, Adriana La Noy, Anne Marie Piernau, Annetje Pieters, Jannetje Pieters, Marritgen Pieters, Pietertje Pieters, Geneviève Prémoy, William Prothero, Mary Read, Margareta Reymers, Jannetje Gijsberts de Ridder, Antonia Rodrigues, Catharin Rosenbrock, Mother Ross, Debora Sampson Gannett (alias Robert Shirtliff, nickname Lady Patriot), Fanziska Scanagatto, Maria Schellinck, Hendrickgen Lamberts van der Schuyr, Hilleke Sell, Trijntje Sijmons (alias Sijmon Poort), Hannah Snell (alias James, or Jemmy, Grey), Elisabeth Sommuruell (alias Tobias Morello), Maria van Spanjen (alias Claas van Vliet), Maria Sophia Stording, Anna Sophia Spiesen (alias Claas Paulusse), Johanna Elisabeth van Swole (alias Leendert van der Zee), Marrija Margriet Sonnevelt, Mary Anne Talbot (alias John Taylor), Aagt de Tamboer, Francijntien Theunis (alias Jan Theunis), Margaret Thompson (alias George Thompson), Lumke Thoole (alias Jan Theunisz), Tiesheld, Maria Jacobse de Turenne, Loreta Janeta Velázquez (alias Harry T. Buford, nickname Lady Rebel), Cattarina Vizzani, Gerrit Jansz van Vlissingen, Lena Catharina Wasmoet (alias Claas Waal), Marij Jacobs Weijers, Jochem Wiesse, Lijsbeth Wijngraef (alias Cornelis Wijngraef), Betty Wilson (alias James Wilson), and Rebecca Young (alias Billy Bridle).
Note 4 — Other blog posts dealing with the common culture of the southern coast of the North Sea in the early modern period are: A Coaking Ode to the Haubarg by the Eiderstedter Nachtigall, Happy Hunting Grounds in the Arctic and Yet Another Wayward Archipelago—the Wadden Sea.
Suggested music
Kartner, P., In ‘t kleine café aan de haven (1975)
Nijs, de R., Malle Babbe (1975)
The Police, Roxanne (1978)
The Presets, Girl And The Sea (2018)
Further reading
Aalders, H. & Voskul, M (eds.), Logboek Slauerhoff. Dagboek en reisverslagen (2023)
Academie van Franeker, De knieval van Rembrandt (website)
Altink, S., Huizen van illusies. Bordelen en prostitutie van de middeleeuwen tot heden (1983)
Altink, S., Prostitutie en marine in Den Helder. Geschikt/Ongeschikt? (2018)
Altink, S., Sekswerk erfgoed, Geschiedenis van de registratie van sekswerkers (2013)
Anderson, I., Alice: Memoirs of a Barbary Coast Prostitute (2016)
Anonymus, Meniste Bruyloften of ‘t Amsterdamsch Hoerdom. Behelzende de listen en streeken, daar zich de Hoeren en Hoerewaardinnen van dienen, benevens der zelver maniere van leeven, dwaaze bijgelovigheden, en in ‘t algemeen alles ‘geen bij dese Juffers in gebruik is. ‘t Amsterdam gedrukt voor de liefhebbers (1681)
Arnold, E.F., Medieval Riverscapes. Environment and Memory in Northwest Europe, c. 300-1100 (2024)
BBC, Mary Magdalene, the clichés (2011)
Beaven, B. & Seiter, M., Regulating Sin in the City: The Moral Geographies of Naval Port Towns in Britain and Germany, c.1860-1914 (2020)
Bettiza, S., Belgium's sex workers get maternity leave and pensions under world-first law (2024)
Boeles, W.B.S., Frieslands Hoogeschool en het Rijks Atheneum te Franeker (1878)
Boison Haas, T. & Abildgaard, A., Mysterieuze Maria Magdalena stond dicht bij Jezus (2023)
Boni, A., Een Provo genaamd François Villon (1970)
Boni, A., François Villon. De Feniks en zijn as (1983)
Boon, G., My mother as a girl in Delfzijl (website)
Bremmer, R.H., Tussen hel en hemel. Geloof in het laat-middeleeuwse Friese rechtsleven (2021)
Bruijn, J.R., Zeegang. Zeevarend Nederland in de achttiende eeuw (2016)
Brummer, C., 'Een koele beschouwing van het maatschappelijk organisme'. De kinderwet van Sam van Houten als economisch idee en het politiek debat over sociale kwesties (2021)
Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS), Welke zeehavens zijn er in Nederland? (website)
Cleveland, J., Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748)
Christensen, A.N., Maritime connections across the North Sea. The exchange of maritime culture and technology between Scandinavia and the Netherlands in the early modern period (2021)
Christensen, E., Vrouwelijke soldaat leefde 17 jaar als man (2024)
City Between, Ep 6—A Pirate Farm in Brooklyn—The Turk’s Plantation (2018)
Cock, de W. (transl.), Françoys Villon 1431-1463… (1998)
Cordingly, D., Women Sailors and Sailor’s Women (2001)
De Graeve, C., Het beeld en de werkelijkheid in de zeventiende-eeuwse ‘bordeeltjes’ belicht vanuit een genderperspectief (2010)
Defoe, D., The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the famous Moll Flanders (1722)
Dekker, R. & Pol, van de L.C., Vrouwen in mannenkleren. De geschiedenis van een tegendraadse traditie. Europa 1500-1800 (1989)
Dijkstra, T.J., Het bezwaar. De beleving van leefomgevinghinder in de periode 1870-2000 in de Friese havenstad Harlingen (2006)
Doedens, A. & Borsboom, M., Gepeild verleden. 700 jaar Loodsengeschiedenis in Nederland (2024)
Doedens, A. & Houter, J., Zeevaarders in de Gouden Eeuw (2022)
Dussen, van der L., De koppelaarster op zeventiende-eeuwse Noord-Nederlandse genreschilderijen (2020)
Dykstra, W., Uit Frieslands volksleven. Van vroeger en later (1966)
Erskine, J., Het korte uur van François Villon (1948)
Eykman, K. & Weve, S., François Villon, dichter, boef en vagebond (2021)
Freeman, M. & Taylor, J.H.M. (eds.), François Villon. The Drama of the Text (1999)
Frijhoff, W. & Spies, M., Dutch Culture in a European Perspective. Volume 1. 1650: Hard-Won Unity (2004)
Graaf, de M., Het foute pad. Moed, leed en tranen (2018)
Greer, B., Sex and the City. The Early Years. A Bawdy Look at Dutch Manhattan (2009)
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