Dear historians, I'd like to ask you if some or any prostitutes lived in brothels in 1700s London or Paris.
I know some prostitutes were married and were as likely to be thieves as sex workers but I can't find any information on this topic. Is it possible that an orphaned girl would be taken/sold to the owner and actually live there?
I am an author and I'm doing some research for a new series. Just throwing it out there to avoid any eyebrow raises :)
In the case of Paris: yes, there were many prostitutes in 18th century Paris, with estimates ranging from 10-15000 (Benamou, 1987) to 40-60000 by contemporary authors (cited by Torlet, 2018). There is a huge amount of information available about this topic: police files, memoirs of police officers, correspondance of famous brothel madams, contemporary accounts etc.
This population could be divided in 3 categories: the streetwalkers, who worked independently and formed the lower class of prostitution; those who worked in brothels; the kept women/courtisans who had one lover or a small number of selected ones. There is no estimate (to my knowledge) about the number of brothels and of the women working there. Some were very small businesses where the madam could be herself a prostitute with a couple of women working for her.
Brothels had two types of sex workers:
About two thirds of the Parisian prostitutes were from the countryside and had immigrated to Paris due to poverty. Some were recruited in the street by older women working for pimps while others turned to prostitution after being abandoned by a lover and left resourceless. Here is an example of the latter, from the files of Inspector de Sartines in the 1760s:
Anne Lallemand aka de Nesle, native of Sedan, aged twenty and orphan of father and mother. Her father, while alive, was a gunsmith in the said place. She came to Paris four years ago, led by a young worker whose name I do not know, from the Apchon dragoon regiment, - who had her first flower, and abandoned her as soon as she arrived in this city, leaving her, however, a few louis, which were soon dissipated. Not knowing which way to turn, she found herself very happy to be received among the boarders of the Lefebvre, a public house at the Barrière Sainte-Anne, where she spent three years in all the exercises of her new state. A young man named Dainse, son of the lawyer of that name, an officer in the Picardy regiment, took her out of this house and gave her a furnished room in the rue des Bons-Enfants.
Others were sold by their parents. The following is a letter sent to Mrs Gourdan aka the Countess, the most famous brothel madam in the second half of the 18th century. A "Mr T." wrote to her on 23 June 1783:
My daughter is approaching the age of fourteen. If you want, we can deal with these first steps together. It will not be difficult to win the little one over. With a few sweets and caresses we can do what we want with her. But that would require some care. You would have to take her into your home as a worker or a maid. If Madame wanted to give me the time of day, I would go there with my daughter & we would make arrangements together.
The most prestigious brothels, like those of Mrs Gourdan, had a close relationship with the authorities and their "boarders" had to be registered with the police. Officially, parental consent was required before a girl could become a "boarder" and it was forbidden to hire virgin girls. Brothels, of course, found workarounds... "Prestige" brothels had also written rules that were distributed to the new "boarders" about what they could and could not do. They offered (theoretically) some modicum of protection against misbehaving customers, but they were also predatory: the boarders could easily run up a debt. Sexual practices were regulated and included vaginal sex, anal sex, intercrural sex, flogging, "lesbian" sex, but very little oral sex. Note that much of the information, such as the daily life in these establishments (see the Sérails de Paris, 1802, volume 1, pp. 20-37 for instance) is from the "high-class" brothels, so there is some bias here.
Again, this is a big topic and much more could be said. A lot of secondary and primary sources are available if you read French (see below for a small selection).
Sources
Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your creative project, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring novelists and the like, based on past experience: some people working on creative projects have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular scene or characterization. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.
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