Or we could have started with Amsterdam, nicknamed ‘the whore on the IJ’ (IJ being a former sea bay), available to do anything as long as you pay. ‘Shanghaiing someone’ even became an expression for forcing a person to do something against her or his will. We could have kicked-off this long-read with the seaport of Shanghai, nicknamed ‘the brothel of Asia’ with its whore madams known as white ants. If you think this post will be too confronting for you, this is the moment to stop reading. But now you know the odds and can do the math yourself to estimate the likely number of johns in your own street or within your happy family. The nondescript term ‘john’, being slang for a man visiting prostitutes, matches in this respect the reality, because they very well can be your next-door neighbour or your brother-in-law, or even without the in-law part. About 70 to 80 percent of the whoremongers has a partner (Ronde 2010). At present in the Netherlands, about 300,000 men visit a whore several times per year, and one out of five men has had an experience with a prostitute’s service in his life. They come from all classes and provenances. Those male readers who think prostitution doesn’t concern them, know that the average whore customer coincides with Average Joe (Altink 1983). Together with the Devil we’ll witness two drunken Frisian skippers during the night, each with a juffertje ‘little whore’ on his knee. We’re even pleased, if we may say so, to meet the Devil and accompany it during a nightly city tour along the whorehouses, bad inns and obscure bars of Amsterdam in the late seventeenth century. Much more than from any other province (Thuijs 2020).įurther below this post we’ll elaborate on the topics mentioned. During the first half of the sixteenth century, Frisians were strongly represented in the criminal statistics, which had to do with the fact it was especially Frisians who emigrated to Amsterdam during this period. According to foreigners visiting the city, women weren’t merely assertive but were ruling the streets in a way. Furthermore, about a third to a half of all criminal acts in Amsterdam was committed by females. ![]() With all the men at sea and the many widows, the ratio of male-female of Amsterdam was 45-55 percent, especially in lower-class and working districts. Becoming a prostitute, was another option, albeit a dishonourable one. That way having the possibility to make a living and survive. Sometimes without being unmasked for years. ![]() Women dressed up in trousers pretending to be a man and enrolling as soldier in the army or the navy, or as sailor in service of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie ‘Dutch East India Company’ (VOC). In general, lower-class women often had to take care for themselves, whilst respectable and honourable jobs were reserved to men.Ī very much overlooked phenomenon in early-modern history of north-western Europe, is travesty. With a two-third chance their men wouldn’t made it back anyway (Dekker & Van de Pol 1989). But this post is also about how wives of sailors had to survive while their husbands were at sea, sometimes for years on end. Only later men interfered and by and large took over the management of brothels. As we’ll see, initially it was women who were dominating the prostitution business, both as whore and whoremaster. It’s about how the lives of women was being influenced by the sea and the sea trade, also known as the Devil’s Highway. This long-read isn’t just about sailors and prostitutes. arrival of Protestants and syphilis bacteria.So, the reader is facilitated to read some bits and pieces, and tempted to read everything nevertheless. Since this post truly is a long-read, we inserted a Table of Contents. In this post we’ll focus on the late medieval and early modern periods, and in which we’ll offer some understanding of the struggle for survival of the women of this coast. A story for long, and sometimes still, wrongly worded and painted as romanticism. Since the Frisia Coast Trail tells the history of a coastal strip of land along the North Sea, the old faithful pair of seafarers and prostitutes must be part of it too. Besides the demands of commerce, ports traditionally cater the demand for sex as well. ![]() Indeed, seaports respond to the needs of everything that arrives from the sea, or that leaves for it. Dockyards, quays, terminals, pilots, warehouses, wharves, anchorages, lighthouses and beacons, craftsmen, shipping companies, customs and other port authorities, fish auctions, boarding houses, lodgings, packing facilities etc.
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