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History of prostitution in France Prostitution
History of prostitution in France The history of prostitution in France has similarities with the history of prostitution in other countries in Europe, namely a succession of periods of tolerance and repression, but with certain distinct features such as a relatively long period of tolerance of brothels. After the period of Roman rule, the Visigoth monarch Theodoric I (ruled 418–451) persecuted pimps, violence was often used against them, the maximum penalty being death. His grandson Alaric II promulgated the Breviary of Alaric in 506, one of its provisions was the prohibition of prostitution. A public flogging was the proscribed penalty. Under this code both pimps and prostitutes were included. Clovis I introduced the code to Frankish Gaul. Charlemagne (768-814 AD) further attempted to suppress prostitution, declaring flogging (300 lashes) as a punishment in his capitularies. This was primarily aimed at the common man, since harems and concubines were common amongst the ruling classes. Some idea of the seriousness with which the state regarded the offense is provided by the fact that 300 lashes was the severest sentence prescribed by the Code Alaric (Breviary of Alaric). Offenders also had their hair cut off, and in the case of recidivism, could be sold as slaves. There is no evidence that any of this was effective.
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In the Middle Ages, the authorities, whether the municipalities, lords or kings, organised or supervised prostitution within institutions. Buildings run by the bourgeois or the church, (particularly abbesses in the 14th and 15th centuries) paid a lease to the authorities. These public brothels were indicated by a red lantern lit by the keeper of the house during opening hours. In general, prostitutes were not marginalised but integrated into a society where they have a role to play. In the fabliaux of the Middle Ages, the prostitutes were accomplices of other women and helped them to avenge the so-called seducers. The cathedral of Chartres has a stained glass (Stained glass of the Parable of the Prodigal Son) which was given by prostitutes, in the same way that other windows were given by other trade guilds. Under Philippe-Auguste an irregular militia, the Ribauds, was instituted around 1189, to whom the policing of the public girls was entrusted in Paris. Its leader, the "King of Ribald" ruled over the prostitution in Paris. The Ribauds were abolished by Philip IV (1285-1314) due to their licentiousness. This general tolerance has exceptions, Louis IX, after returning from the Seventh Crusade, sought to make the kingdom conform with religious views of morality and initially tried to prohibit prostitution. By a Royal Decree of December 1254, he pronounced the expulsion of all "women of evil life" from the kingdom and confiscation of their belongings. It also outlined punishment for prostitutes and pimps.
The prostitutes went into hiding and the king was pressured to restore the previous situation. Faced with the impossibility of applying this decree, a second ordinance of 1256 was introduced. Although still railing against women who were "free with their bodies and other common harlots", he acknowledged the pragmatic desirability of housing them away from respectable streets and religious establishments, and so obliged them to reside outside of the borders of the city walls. These measures did nothing to reduce prostitution and the number of prostitutes continued to rise. In 1269, Louis IX, who was preparing to embark on the Eighth Crusade, again sought to root out evil from the realm. Once again, the clandestine activities of the prostitutes and the disorder created made the king revoke the order. His resolve to do away with prostitution was affirmed in a letter of 1269 to the regents in which he refers to the need to extirpate the evil, root and branch. The punishment for infraction was an 8 sous fine and risking imprisonment in the Châtelet (see below). He designated nine streets in which prostitution would be allowed in Paris, three of them being in the sarcastically named Beaubourg quartier. In 1358, the Grand Conseil of John II (1350- 1364) echoing the "necessary evil" doctrine of Saints Augustine (354-430 AD) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) declared that "les pécheresses sont absolument nécessaires à la Terre" (Sinners are an absolute necessity for the country).[5] Prostitution remained confined to designated areas, as indicated in this decree in the reign of Charles V (1364-1380), by Hugh Aubriot, Provost of Paris in 1367, outlining the areas outside of which prostitutes would be punished 'according to the ordinance of Saint Louis'
The tolerance period continued in the 15th century, but the 16th century saw a return to repression. Among the factors that may explain this change is the emergence of syphilis in the late 15th century (possibly in Naples in 1494, though recent studies challenge this) and the reformation in Catholic cities returning to more rigid morality. In 1560, the Edict of Blois made prostitution an illicit activity and a new moral order swept over France. Imprisonment or banishment was applied to those who did not respect the new prohibitions. Despite these measures the number of prostitutes did not decrease. Thus in 1658, Louis XIV ordered all women guilty of prostitution, fornication or adultery be imprisoned in the Pitié- Salpêtrière until the priests or religious officials say they have repented and changed. It is also Louis XIV who created, in 1667, the function of lieutenant-general of police, who will be in control of the surveillance of the public girls. In 1687, orders were issued that prostitutes should not be within two leagues of Versailles or in the company of soldiers. Punishment was severe and consisted of cutting off of nose and ears The women should have their morals be corrected by work and piety. The police had full power to repress indiscriminately debauchery, prostitution and adultery, but in 1708 and 1713 (Ordinance of July 26, 1713 on "women debauchery" which enshrines the offence of prostitution), the conditions of repression are somewhat formalised (Louis XIV was in the end influenced by devout influences and ended his life of libertinage).
After the French Revolution, the revolutionaries removed prostitution from the domain of the law, refusing to make it a matter of legislation. In a break with the proliferation of the previous royal ordinances and their prohibitionist approach, the revolutionaries established, by absence in the main codes of law in 1791, the tolerance of this activity. Only the surveillance of places of prostitution is prescribed by the Code of Police and procuring minors is punishable by the Penal Code in the name of the violation of morality, a legal category created by revolutionaries. The practice of prostitution itself is not outlawed. At the turn of the century, the authorities estimated that there were 30,000 prostitutes in Paris alone, plus an additional 10,000 high-class prostitutes. To measure the extent of the phenomenon, most contemporary historians point out that if the proportion of prostitutes was the same today (about 13% of women), Paris would have a population of more than 100,000 prostitutes. The Consulate (1799-1804) continued the tolerance and paves the way for maisons de tolérance. A Decree of 3 March 1802 legislates mandatory health inspection prostitutes in an attempt to stem the spread of syphilis, which was endemic at the time. On Napoleon's order of October 12, 1804, the prefect of police in Paris, Louis Dubois, prescribed the official organisation of the houses of pleasures. The year 1804 saw the legalisation of tolerance and brothels. Women and houses are controlled by the Brigade des mœurs.
The women had to register at the prefecture in order to work in a brothel. Each woman had to have a twice-weekly medical check-up, which is perceived as the most degrading part of their job and abhorred by the prostitutes. In April 1831, 3,131 girls registered at the Paris Prefecture. The women received a registration card, and the brothels a registration number. Prostitutes recognised by the state were said to be "soumises", as opposed to those working clandestinely, known as "insoumises", who were punished. This regulation lasted until the closing of brothels in 1946 by the Loi Marthe Richard. Soliciting was prohibited and the women were confined to registered brothels. It was at this time that Alexandre Parent-Duchâtelet published De la prostitution dans la ville de Paris (Prostitution in the City of Paris), in which he noted the misery of prostitutes, which he estimated to be 10,000 in Paris, and the poor functioning of medical control. From approximately 1871 to 1903, the writer Maxime Du Camp counted 155,000 women officially registered as prostitutes, but during the same period, the police stopped 725,000 others for clandestine prostitution. During World War I, in Paris alone, US Army officials estimated that there were 40 major brothels, 5,000 professionally licensed streetwalkers, and another 70,000 unlicensed prostitutes. By 1917, there were at least 137 such establishments across 35 towns on or close to the Western front. At the end of the Second World War, there were 1,500 officially recognised brothels in France, including 177 in Paris. in 1953, the lowest estimates were of 40,000 prostitutes in Paris (the highest being 70,000), while there are nearly 500 clandestine brothels, a number which was increasing.