Introduction

At first glance, Bruges—a provincial town in Belgium—and prostitution may appear to be worlds apart. With its mediaeval and mediaeval-esque buildings, cobblestone streets, and canals, Bruges is known as a picture-perfect tourist destination. Its charms attract people from all over the world, but unlike in Amsterdam, the must-sees in Bruges do not include the red-light district. Moreover, visitors who are not deliberately on the lookout for prostitutes are unlikely to have spotted a single one in the last decade because commercial sex is simply not part of the scenery. ¹ Of course, that is not to say that the sex trade is non-existent or that it has always been as small-scale and inconspicuous as it is now. As is the case elsewhere, prostitution evolved in tandem with the city’s size and economy, and at the end of the Middle Ages, Bruges was one of Europe’s largest, most thriving urban centres, and commercial sex was readily available. ² However, unlike most of the cities discussed in this volume, Bruges’ past is not characterized by progressive growth, urbanization, or industrialization, or by a concomitant increase in its prostitution sector. Rather, contemporary Bruges is a small provincial town, and as such it is an interesting case study because it affords us the opportunity to see how prostitution evolved in a languishing urban centre during the early modern and modern eras.

There is less literature on the sex trade in Bruges than there is for larger cities. Only one monograph has been published on the subject to date, namely Guy Dupont’s work regarding prostitution during the Burgundian period (1385–1515). ³ The aim here, however, is to provide a long-term overview of the seventeenth century and onwards. In doing so, I will rely on unpublished research and data collected by myself, masters students, and Pasop, a non-profit organization that works with prostitutes in the region. ⁴ The availability of information means that my emphasis here is on the evolution that took place between the second half of the eighteenth century, the second half of the nineteenth century, both World Wars, and the present day. Under discussion are the push and pull factors involved in the trade, the legal norms concerning prostitution, the social profiles of sex workers, their dependency on their employers, and their working conditions. Not all of these topics are analysed in depth for all the periods covered due to the limitations of the primary source material, which include normative sources, registration lists, police and court records, interviews, and social statistics. Each type of source has particular advantages and disadvantages, but discussing these in detail here would take us too far from the matter at hand. What is important to keep in mind is that the availability of a specific source largely depends on the legal framework of the era. However, before examining the legislation, I will first outline the context, as well as the factors that have influenced the supply and demand of commercial sex.

The Bruges Context

As mentioned in the introduction, while prostitution was widespread in Bruges at the end of the Middle Ages, the situation has since greatly altered. Two periods proved decisive in bringing about this change. The first came at the end of Bruges’ “golden age” in the fifteenth century, when the city’s primary economic sectors, textile production and international commerce, dwindled, as did the numbers of businessmen and sailors. The population decreased from 42,000 inhabitants in 1477 to 29,000 just one hundred years later, ⁵ and the sex trade shrank to meet the needs of the remaining locals as well as soldiers, merchants, and sailors. The second turning point came during the second half of the twentieth century when Bruges finally overcame its stagnation and increasingly was profiled as a tourist destination. Moreover, the development of Zeebrugge as a major European port shifted the focal point of the city’s economic life away from Bruges proper. ⁶ This reorganization, along with the city’s new image as an affluent and wholesome tourist destination, led the sex workers who had been present in the heart of Bruges for centuries to relocate outside its mediaeval walls to the roadways around the town.

However, this is merely the long-term evolution, and a simplified picture of it at that. The era between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries was not a single uninterrupted run of financial desolation. Bruges did experience economic upswings, particularly during the region’s peaceful interludes, and it would be imprudent to use the city’s golden age as the yardstick for prosperity. For example, periodic improvements to the port and waterways brought repeated cycles of growth to the trade sector. When Ghent was reconnected with the sea around 1750, the canal shipping trade in Bruges thrived yet again. ⁷ In fact, the end of the seventeenth century and the second half of the eighteenth century proved exceptions to the city’s long-term economic stagnation. Textile production, although it had been in a state of crisis since the seventeenth century, remained important until it failed to industrialize in the nineteenth century. At that time it completely collapsed, resulting in the most sombre chapter of Bruges’ history. Abject poverty became widespread, and the crop failures of the 1840s worsened an already dire situation. ⁸ Bruges was known as the poorest city in nineteenth-century Flanders, and while this portrayal has been somewhat altered in the current historiography, there is no doubt that the city was extremely impoverished. ⁹

As the analysis of prostitutes’ wages below will make clear, these economic changes had an obvious impact on the demand and supply aspects of commercial sex, but until recently there was always a sizable call for such services in the city itself. Today’s clients are more mobile and tend to seek their sexual gratification further away, but in the past the prostitution sector catered to both the local townsmen and the surrounding rural population. Their customer base was varied, consisting of youngsters, married men, and the clergy as well, the latter being a fairly large group in Bruges. The presence of itinerates such as sailors, traveling merchants, and military troops caused the supply to exceed local demand, and the latter group in particular fuelled the trade. Bruges became a garrison town in the seventeenth century, and soldiers of all ranks show up as clients in the source materials well into the twentieth century. Between 1865 and 1882, for example, Bruges’ garrison consisted of about 1,200 men, a considerable number in a population of only 45,000. ¹⁰

The constant demand by soldiers and other men for sex was met by a steady supply of impoverished women during all but the last period under discussion. In Bruges, as elsewhere, women’s employment opportunities were limited, and what work there was did not pay well. For example, in the eighteenth century, lace makers and spinners—the most common occupations among Bruges’ female population—only earned two to four pennies a day, while an unskilled male labourer received about twelve. ¹¹ Moreover, Bruges was characterized demographically by a preponderance of females, a high age of marriage, and a large proportion of permanently unwed women. ¹² This imbalance reached its peak at the start of the nineteenth century when only 36 per cent of women above the age of 15 were married, as opposed to 57 per cent of the men. ¹³ So at any given time there were many single females who had to survive without the benefit of a spouse. And while Bruges did not attract many immigrants, foreigners did supplement the local labour force; prostitution was a mobile occupation and women involved in it could pass through many urban centres in the region since the distances involved were small. Those travelling between Ghent, Dunkirk, Lille, and Ostend all stopped in Bruges on the way.

The Legal Framework

Just as Bruges’ socio-economic circumstances changed over the centuries, so too did the way in which the city dealt with prostitution. During the mediaeval and early modern eras, prostitution was handled via a combination of repression and tolerance. The proportions of repression and tolerance, however, fluctuated over both the short term and in the long run, although the terminology used sometimes makes this difficult to determine from the materials available. Prostitution as such is not discussed in Bruges’ early normative sources, which only deal with adultery and encouraging fornication as criminal offences. ¹⁴ In fact, no word even existed for a person selling sexual services, and the nearest equivalent—“whore”—was applied to any women engaging in extra-marital sex. Economic transactions were not entirely irrelevant, as the authorities did prosecute those who remunerated more often than women who had merely had premarital sex. However, the sources require careful reading in order to distinguish which was which. Eventually, professional “whores” evolved into a separate category over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ¹⁵ as reflected by the appearance of the word “prostituting”, which gradually replaced “whoring” when the case involved commercial sex. ¹⁶

Even so, actual prostitution was not always prosecuted. Tolerance prevailed during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and while brothel keepers were routinely fined, the collection pattern demonstrates that the fines were not meant to be punitive, but instead functioned as a form of taxation. ¹⁷ Given Bruges’ status as a centre of international trade, the authorities may have found it convenient to allow a relatively free market for sexual gratification, and it seems that commercial sex was only cracked down on when excesses occurred. However, an increasing number of brothel keepers were prosecuted towards the end of the fifteenth century—perhaps not coincidentally, as Bruges was past its peak—and so tolerance gradually gave way to repression. ¹⁸ It is not clear when this changed yet again, but it appears that tolerance once more dominated during most of the early modern period; in the mid-seventeenth century, a mere handful of brothel keepers and prostitutes were prosecuted and years could pass without a single arrest. ¹⁹ However, this laissez-faire approach stands in sharp contrast with the eighteenth century, particularly during the second half, in which an average of nine prostitutes were prosecuted a year. This was quite a substantial number given that the average in Ghent—a city almost twice the size of Bruges—was only two a year. ²⁰ Presumably this had more to do with the mechanisms of social control available in both cities than a difference in attitudes, and in any case Bruges had a larger police force. ²¹

Nevertheless, the policy of repression was aimed at regulation rather than abolition, and as long as social norms were by and large respected, prostitution was tolerated to varying degrees. Many prostitutes were only brought to trial as the result of complaints or at the request of family members. ²² And in many hearings, other prostitutes and brothel keepers were named who were not arrested afterwards. It seems that when the Bruges authorities deviated from this pattern it was because of a perception on the part of the authorities that the sector was growing too conspicuous. In some years, they raided brothel houses and arrested all the women present, which resulted in peaks in the prosecution rate of up to thirty-eight a year.

Indeed, visibility seems to have both triggered periods of repression and influenced policy towards prostitution in general. Eighteenth-century court records show that public solicitation was judged more harshly than prostitution hidden behind brothel doors, even though these houses were located in the centre of Bruges. When Louis Stevens was interrogated following an accusation of brothel keeping in 1770, the aldermen seem to have been most upset by the fact that he lured in customers by sending his girls out onto the streets to seduce men. ²³ Moreover, there were a few city council resolutions concerning prostitution showing that Bruges’ authorities had experimented with segregation at times. In 1491, nocturnal streetwalking in the town centre was prohibited and in 1624, an ordinance was adopted stipulating that “those keeping a brothel or dishonest house within the city would be confined and forced to move outside the old town to an area provided outside the city walls.” ²⁴ These laws cannot have been valid for very long, as court records do not indicate that any such policies were put into practise. Nevertheless, they show that the authorities were looking to remove prostitution from public spaces, not put a stop to it. As in most places in the early modern period, prostitution in Bruges was judged a “necessary evil”, impossible to repress entirely but still requiring some form of control.

The same attitude prevailed into the nineteenth century but was translated into an entirely different policy: regulation instead of repression or segregation. Prostitution was allowed but could only take place in official brothel houses, and the prostitutes had to be registered and medically monitored. This approach was first put into practice in France at the start of the revolution, and under Napoleon it spread throughout much of Europe, including the southern Netherlands. Bruges, however, followed suit somewhat later. While Ghent already had an ordinance regarding the regulation of prostitution in 1809, the first such law in Bruges dates from 1839. ²⁵ It stipulated that brothel houses had to request a license to operate, and prostitutes had to register in what was commonly called het hoerenboek—the book of whores. Furthermore, they were not allowed to solicit customers outside of the brothel and they had to undergo a weekly medical examination; if infected with a venereal disease, they were hospitalized. By 1841, the town had ten official brothels and twenty-two registered prostitutes. However, many more worked illicitly; there were at least seventeen clandestine houses of ill repute and forty-five illegal prostitutes at the time. ²⁶ In order to come to grips with the problem, the authorities revised the legislation in 1871 to allow the police to register prostitutes on their own initiative.

Prior to World War ii, Bruges adjusted the ordinances pertaining to prostitution three more times, in 1884, 1920, and 1939. And while regulation remained the primary focus of the new laws, both the changes that were made and how the policies were enforced show that the influence of the abolitionist movement had grown. For example, clandestine houses were harshly suppressed several times at the end of the nineteenth century. ²⁷ All brothels were abolished in 1939; prostitution was not punishable as such, but it was no longer permitted for third parties to profit from it. ²⁸ The Germans had changed local policies during World War i, and during World War ii they did the same, repealing the 1939 legislation. They shared the social and moral considerations of the abolitionists, but their policy was primarily concerned with ensuring that soldiers had access to a disease-free sexual outlet. It was believed that banning commercial sex outright would have affected morale and also encouraged homosexuality and clandestine prostitution. As such, strict regulations were put in place with regard to brothels and prostitutes servicing the troops, and other forms of prostitution were forbidden. ²⁹

In 1948, regulations pertaining to prostitution throughout Belgium were formally declared null and void by the central government, which opted to take an abolitionist approach that has lasted to this day. ³⁰ The end of regulation—the first national legislation about prostitution—was brought about for several underlying reasons. Attempts to control venereal diseases had not been effective, and it was considered immoral for the state to be involved with the sex industry at any level. This move was also in line with international trends, given that Belgium was one of the few countries still attempting to regulate prostitution. ³¹ Yet while it remains legal, the legislation since passed is highly ambiguous in the sense that many related activities such as running a brothel and advertising are subject to prosecution, which means that the sector is still linked with criminality. Moreover, prostitution is still handled by municipal governments and local policies are not always in line with national law. In Ghent, for example, sex workers are registered and prostitution is tolerated within a specific neighbourhood; furthermore, renting windows so that prostitutes can showcase their bodies, while illegal according to the criminal code, is permitted in that area. In Bruges, on the other hand, there is no divergence between legislation and local policy simply because the sector is so small. ³²

The ambiguous and varied nature of Belgium’s approach has been subject to critique from different angles. In 2013, the Minister of the Interior, Joëlle Milquet, while speaking at an international conference on human trafficking and sexual exploitation stated that the extant national legislation should be strictly adhered to. ³³ Legal specialists and those actually working with sex workers, on the other hand, pled for change. While forced prostitution and human trafficking are issues that must be dealt with, they pointed out that the majority of sex workers are not working under such circumstances. They argued that the legislation was only created to address a minority of prostitutes, and that by concentrating on this group alone legislators have turned all sex workers into passive victims despite the fact that many are making their own decisions. ³⁴ An analysis of the social profiles of prostitutes in Bruges supports the reformers’ critiques.

Social Profiles

Foreign women are overrepresented in the sex trade, but that does not change the fact that prostitution is not just “migrant work” or solely the result of human trafficking. In smaller cities and places not characterized by much mobility, locals constitute the majority of the prostitute population. Indeed, less than 35 per cent of Bruges’ current sex workers were born outside of Belgium. In the past, the number of foreigners was smaller, although given the city’s appeal during the Burgundian period, it is likely that the number of immigrant prostitutes at that time was relatively large—an assumption that is thus far only supported by sparse data regarding the origins of brothel keepers. ³⁵ When looking at prostitutes’ origins in more recent centuries, improvements in transportation as well as globalization have had a clear impact (see Table 3.1). The number of foreign sex workers gradually increased, as did the distances travelled—a trend only interrupted by major wars and the resultant constraints on movement. Nineteenth-century Bruges had roughly the same number of foreign sex workers as today, but their origins were quite different. In 2011, 20 per cent of non-native prostitutes came from countries outside of the European Union and 12 per cent from western Europe, while in the nineteenth century one woman hailed from the United States and 97 per cent from neighbouring countries. ³⁶ Clearly not all sex workers are migrants; nor is it reasonable to expect that they would be. Individual career possibilities are determined by a complex interplay of personal traits and circumstances. Indeed, one of the most decisive factors in determining what professional opportunities are available to people is their socio-economic background—an element that intersects with migrants’ origins (Table 3.1) as they are often poor and, at least by the standards of their adopted country, poorly educated.

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Nevertheless, the sparse evidence concerning the education of Bruges’ sex workers confirms that the majority—regardless of their origin—have never been highly educated, although in the past, prostitutes were not exceptional in this regard. In the eighteenth century, the majority of the city’s prostitutes were trained to work in the low-skilled textile industries, just as many other women in the region were. An educational gap does not appear until the nineteenth century, when 49 per cent of the prostitutes were found to be illiterate as opposed to 41 per cent of the total female population. ³⁸ However, this divergence from the general populace only began to widen during the twentieth century. Specific figures for Bruges are not available, but in present-day Flanders the mean age at which prostitutes quit school is nearly 18, although education is compulsory until this age and the majority of teenagers go on to study at a university or take part in another form of higher education. Of course, this can partially be explained by general evolutions in education, such as increased access and greater diversity within the curriculum, but it does indicate that prostitutes have become a more distinct group within society. ³⁹

Prostitutes’ professional lives evolved in a similar fashion. During the early modern period, poorly paid jobs in textile production and the garment trade were the most common occupations among Bruges’ prostitutes simply because that was the case for most women. Their numbers only declined in the nineteenth century after the collapse of the textile industry. Domestic service then became the single most important employment sector for young women and the number of servants who ended up in prostitution markedly increased. The common belief that domestic servants were particularly vulnerable to prostitution cannot be confirmed, but it may be explained somewhat by both differences in professions and a certain degree of compartmentalization within the prostitution sector. In the early modern period, domestic servants were better off than lace makers because they lived with their employers and were not dependent upon the vagaries of the market. However, servants had more to lose if they lost their position, and therefore turned more easily to work as full-time brothel prostitutes. Lace makers, on the other hand, were more likely to supplement their meagre incomes by occasional streetwalking. ⁴⁰

Employment opportunities for women only became truly diverse in the twentieth century, and this is again reflected by sex workers’ previous or other professions. At the start of the century, an increasing number of prostitutes worked at one point in manufacturing or catering, and by the turn of the century they had been joined by part-time cleaners, nurses, saleswomen, labourers, and others. ⁴¹ So today, sex workers’ professional backgrounds reflect the entire gamut of employment opportunities available to women in general, and this includes those in high-end jobs, although low-skilled and low-paid professions still predominate. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that women with a higher degree of education often occupy the profession’s upper levels and tend to earn the most money in the sector. This is hardly surprising given that prostitution has always offered comparatively higher wages, which is the primary motivation for women joining the profession, even among those already earning a decent income. In the eighteenth century, the smallest recorded amount for the services of a prostitute was five pennies, whereas Bruges lace makers only earned two to four pennies a day. ⁴² And today, Ghent’s window prostitutes earn €50 in fifteen minutes, while the mean hourly wage in Belgium amounts €11. ⁴³

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Sex workers’ ages also vary from individual to individual, but their mean ages reflect a clear trend towards prostitutes now being considerably older than their predecessors, as seen in Table 3.2. In the eighteenth century, the mean age of prostitutes at the time of their first arrest was 23, while the estimated mean now is 34. For the most part, this was a gradual shift. The nineteenth-century mean was 26, which then dipped slightly in the first half of the twentieth century to 25. This means that the bulk of the increase came in the second half of the twentieth century. This trend is related to shifts in the ages at which they joined and then left the profession.

Nearly three in four of all prostitutes in eighteenth-century Bruges were younger than 24–25 at the time of their first arrest, and the court records containing such information indicate that most had started in their late teens or early twenties, although a few had started as young as 14, and one even at 13. This remained unchanged in the nineteenth century; while 45 per cent of prostitutes began working in the sector before the age of 20, 38 per cent indicated they had started between the ages of 20 and 24. ⁴⁵ The mean age at which present-day prostitutes working in East and West Flanders started, however, is 26. Changes in the legislation and alterations in the norms surrounding adulthood and the appropriate age at which to start working help explain this evolution. In the eighteenth century, there was no legal distinction between those who had turned 25—the actual age of majority at the time—and those who had not. People began working at much younger ages than today and were considered to be adults well before that time. In the early-modern era, women were seen as being adults from their mid-teens onward, a time when they were paid as adult labourers and no longer referred to as children. ⁴⁶ Today, prostitution is legal for women who attain the age of majority—now 18—and people start working at much later ages. ⁴⁷ Juvenile prostitutes still exist, but they are the exception rather than the norm because the authorities are quick to intervene in such cases. ⁴⁸

The stopping age has undergone a similar evolution. While nearly one in three contemporary sex workers are 40 or over, this was almost never the case in the eighteenth century. In his research on prostitution in eighteenth-century London, Randolph Trumbach argued that prostitutes stopped when they got too old because once youth and beauty were gone, the clients disappeared. ⁴⁹ And for the eighteenth century, this does indeed seems to have been true. The few older prostitutes operated at the margins of the sector. For example, 45-year-old Marie Bosan clearly had trouble finding clients as the aldermen stated that “she not only called the married men and youngsters in, but children of ten to twelve years as well.” ⁵⁰ Today, physical ageing takes its toll more gradually thanks to better living conditions, hygiene, and cosmetics, as well as improvements in and greater access to medical care, and while the increase in sex workers’ ages may not be entirely related to these developments, they certainly play an important role. In any case, the ageing of the prostitute population has had important consequences, such as extending the length of their careers in the profession and changes in their family circumstances.

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While the greater majority of eighteenth and nineteenth-century prostitutes were unmarried (Table 3.3), today more than half are in a long-term relationship. ⁵² Again, general developments were responsible for this, including the decreasing age of marriage and the shrinking number of spinsters prior to the second half of the twentieth century, and the increase in cohabitation afterwards. ⁵³ Spikes during wartime in the number of married women engaging in the sex trade probably reflect temporary situations in which wives left on their own may have turned to prostitution in their struggle to survive, although this is hard to estimate. It is certainly possible that the historical sources available did not always note when an absent husband had been mobilized. ⁵⁴ The number of prostitutes with children (see Table 3.4) was likewise subject to change. The contemporary sex worker population contains the greatest number of mothers—a rather notable finding given the widespread use of birth control. However, there are some reasonable explanations. Present-day prostitutes tend to be older when joining the profession, and having been fertile longer than women in the past they are thus more likely to have children in general. Furthermore, both having children out of wedlock and being a single mother are normal features of today’s society. Either way, it only confirms that sex workers are actually quite ordinary women.

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Certainly, they’re just as varied as the general population, although some trends are present among their profiles. While they cannot all be stereotyped as poor young migrants, analyses do show that some groups are overrepresented. Women with minimal prospects, such as migrants or the poorly educated, do indeed become prostitutes more often than others; moreover, as Bruges has become more diverse, offering more possibilities to more people, prostitutes increasingly come from distinct social groups. However, this does not make them passive victims. This stereotype of prostitutes as being “vulnerable” is linked to the impression that they fall prey to unscrupulous exploiters, but what do we actually know about the circumstances of their employment?

Sex Workers and Their Employers

While it is the case that some sex workers, both official and illicit, work under the oversight or protection of a brothel owner, madam, procurer, or pimp, this is not true of all. Many prostitutes have operated independently throughout history. Even in the nineteenth century, when prostitutes were not legally allowed to work outside of Bruges’ official brothels, a considerable number still walked the streets or received men in private. ⁵⁶ Presumably profitability has always been the most important factor in determining working arrangements. When the sector is lucrative, it attracts more people seeking to arrange contact between prostitutes and their clients—intermediaries, in other words. Prostitution is not as profitable in Bruges now, and as a result there are many more independent sex workers in the city; nearly half operate in private settings, whereas this is only the case for one fourth of the prostitutes in East and West Flanders as a whole. ⁵⁷ In the eighteenth century, about a third of the Bruges’ prostitutes were streetwalkers or women who frequented dishonest inns, but it is not clear at all as to how many were actually working on their own. The court records indicate that some were accompanied by an intermediary or were called to a house of ill repute whenever they had customers, while others had arrangements with the inns they frequented. However, few streetwalkers were entirely dependent on intermediaries and about one in ten of all prostitutes received customers in their own homes—an activity that they often combined with running their own brothels.

All the same, the level of organization involved in eighteenth-century prostitution is remarkable. At the time of their arrest, four out of ten prostitutes lived—or had lived—in a “closed brothel”, that is to say an establishment, usually an inn run by a keeper in which they both lived and worked. While individual circumstances varied, there is no doubt that this system generally curtailed prostitutes’ freedom; some women informed the authorities that they could leave the house at any moment and many clearly did, while others stated they were practically imprisoned. In Bruges, as in other early modern cities, debt bondage was the most common method employed for keeping prostitutes in such houses. ⁵⁸ Debts could be accrued for boarding costs but also for clothing, drinks, travel costs, and the like, and the most remorseless brothel keepers charged so much for these services that prostitutes’ expenses exceeded their incomes. Marianne Stiers, for instance, declared that even though she earned a lot of money, she had to give it all to the bawdy woman to cover the debts she had run up because of the wine she drank, thus making it impossible to leave. ⁵⁹ Marie De Faït similarly said, “She did not know how to pay off her debts when she was charged for everything she consumed.” ⁶⁰

Indeed, few of the eighteenth-century prostitutes indicated that they had started against their will but many claimed that they lost their freedom after entering the brothel house. Marie Le Boeuf testified that she entered the brothel on her own initiative, but when she thought better of it, she could not leave because she was under surveillance, and she said that her only hope was that her father would come to fetch her. ⁶¹ Unfortunately, there are no more recent sources that can tell us whether such practises continued, but it is likely that prostitutes’ circumstances remained just as diverse, with some working independently to varying degrees and others becoming trapped. Presumably, the latter situation became increasingly uncommon over time due to increased regulations, particularly in the last few decades. According to Ans Traen and An Mortier from the ngo Pasop, forced prostitution is much less widespread today than is often believed. They indicated that they do not know of a single sex worker in West Flanders who is constrained by an intermediary or for whom it is impossible to stop. And while they conceded that quitting the sector is difficult as a result of other circumstances such as the problems involved in explaining away such a gap in a résumé, this is a different issue. ⁶²

However, while few eighteenth-century women declared that they were forced into prostitution, “choice” is a relative concept. Prostitutes were often persuaded to take up the profession via misrepresentations. For example, Jacoba Mesijs said that she started because her prospective madam claimed to know girls in Antwerp who had earned eighty-one guilders in sixteen days. ⁶³ Jacoba entered prostitution to earn a lot of money, but the amount she was promised clearly was exaggerated. And while forced prostitution was the exception rather than the norm, it did occur. Anne Marie Cootens testified that while looking for work, she had moved in with Marie Callens, who, unbeknownst to her, ran a house of ill repute. When she had not found a job after a few days, Anne Marie had to sell some of her clothing. Callens “saw that she was in need” and gave her clothes but “forced her to go into a room with the clients of the inn.” ⁶⁴ Anne Marie informed the aldermen and Callens was jailed, but other women were not so fortunate. Rather, they acquired more debt and were passed between brothels, thus becoming trapped in trafficking networks.

Indeed, trafficking—meaning here all assisted migration, both voluntary and involuntary—is not a modern phenomenon. Eighteenth-century brothel owners in Bruges corresponded with colleagues elsewhere to exchange girls and plan their travel. The only thing that changed over the course of time was the expanse of territories they operated across. While Bruges’ eighteenth-century networks did not reach further than Brussels, those of the nineteenth century crossed some national borders and the present ones cross even more. ⁶⁵ A substantial number of immigrant prostitutes were trafficked, especially those from farther away. In fact, eighteenth-century sex workers who were not native to Bruges rarely began their careers there. Most were prostitutes on the move and the city was just one more stop on the road. Indeed, such networks allowed for a great deal of mobility; some women only stayed in Bruges for a few weeks or months before they continued on their way.

The role played by trafficking networks is hard to pin down. Yet it is certain that they were not merely mechanisms of forced prostitution, although they did operate as such in some cases. The aforementioned Marianne Stiers, for example, was passed between brothel keepers as a result of her debts. Other women, however, willingly took part in trafficking. Clara Van den Brugge of Brussels told the Bruges aldermen that she voluntarily went to the city along with a friend in order to live in Jan De Met’s house of ill repute. ⁶⁶ For their part, Bruges’ Macqué sisters accepted a brothel madam’s offer for employment in her Ostend establishment because their reputation in Bruges was at stake as a result of the fact that they had been streetwalking. ⁶⁷ In the nineteenth century, the police investigated accusations of trafficking levelled against Léon Désiré Thibault, a French brothel owner. He was not found guilty because the women involved were of age and were already working as prostitutes before travelling to Bruges, which—according to the police—meant that they had not been forced. ⁶⁸ Although this may be disputable, it is clear that trafficked prostitutes rarely fit the standard image of innocent young girls. Prostitutes have always had many reasons for moving, including the avoidance of social stigma or simply looking out for greater profits. In addition, they were often forced to travel onwards in the eighteenth century because of court judgements banishing them. Willingly or not, trafficked women ended up working under highly diverse conditions, whether in brothels that varied in terms of their size, organisation, profitability, and amenities or in the precarious circumstances experienced elsewhere by the prostitute population at large.

Working Conditions

In the early modern period, the boundaries between different types of prostitution were less clear than they are today. Streetwalkers solicited for customers around military barracks and theatres and retired to soldiers’ quarters, cemeteries, or the town ramparts for sexual intercourse. ⁶⁹ Most prostitutes, however, combined indoor and outdoor transactions. They either looked for costumers at inns or brought in those that they had found elsewhere. On some days, they did not leave the bars they frequented, while on others they stayed outdoors completely. Prostitutes working in closed brothel houses usually plied their trade inside the building, but some did go out to look for clients when none appeared on the premises. Women working from home similarly found customers on the streets or called out to them from their windows. The rare upper-class prostitute was more discrete, however, and remained indoors like the mistresses who were installed in private houses or brothel rooms to provide services for one man. It is likely that similar practises were employed in the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth, although maintaining the same level of the flexibility between indoor and outdoor business must have been made complicated by the legal framework that only allowed prostitution inside registered brothels.

Today, visible forms of prostitution have entirely disappeared from Bruges. There are no sex workers soliciting in parks, nor are there window prostitutes; as mentioned above, this change is related to evolutions in both Bruges’ economy and public image. The other side of the spectrum—the escorts—are not represented either, or at least they are not known. Rather, Bruges’ sex workers operate out of bars (52 per cent), private settings (44 per cent), and saunas and massage parlours (4 per cent). ⁷⁰ Although it is hard to generalize, the city’s prostitutes today seem to work in relatively decent circumstances. They are sheltered from the dangerous and unpleasant situations related to working on the streets and they are not completely dependent on pimps or procurers. However, each type of prostitution and each individual situation have their own benefits and drawbacks, particularly when it comes to earning potential.

The price of sex depends on several interrelated factors. In addition to the setting, the service provided, and the class of the prostitute, the client also matters. What little data is available from the eighteenth-century records indicate that prices ranged from five pennies to one crown, which is between half and five times the daily wage of an unskilled labourer. ⁷¹ In the nineteenth century, prices fluctuated between one and fifty francs. ⁷² The first was the standard price for soldiers visiting brothels, while the latter was the amount paid by a Bruges baron to a Brussels prostitute who regularly travelled to Bruges at his request; a special room was readied for their use upon each occasion. Most revealingly, the woman slept with another client for just two francs. ⁷³ Similar examples can be found in the eighteenth century, and they all make it clear that historical prices depended more on the class of the client than that of the sex worker. Contemporary data for Bruges could not be retrieved, but it seems modern prices are more consistent: window prostitutes in Ghent charge €50 for fifteen minutes, while a brothel visit of half an hour costs around €100. ⁷⁴

Despite the large range, prices have remained remarkably stable over the long run. According to Chris Vandenbroeke, the mean price of a half hour in a brothel is invariably the equivalent of one male day’s wage. ⁷⁵ And the data discussed here more or less confirm this: the mean price in the eighteenth century was 113 per cent of one daily wage, 117 per cent in the nineteenth century, and the mean net daily wage of Belgians today amounts to around €100—just enough for thirty minutes in a brothel. ⁷⁶ Still, these long-run comparisons obscure short-term fluctuations. Nineteenth-century data indicate that in the 1880s, a time of economic crisis in which there was an exceptionally high number of prostitutes, the mean price dropped to just 40 per cent of the daily wage. ⁷⁷ The current economic crisis has also affected prostitutes. As Traen and Mortier put it, “The demand side decreases while the supply side increases.” The result is that prostitutes have more down time between customers, while the costs of certain types of accommodation, like windows in Ghent, have substantially increased. So even though the prices have not changed in twenty years, the net daily wage earned by sex workers has declined over the last decade. ⁷⁸

While sex workers’ wages—even at the low end of the sector—have always been high compared to those of other women, the sums paid by customers do not tell us much with regard to their actual earnings. There are always costs involved. Prostitutes working with an intermediary have to hand over about half their pay—a proportion that has not changed over the centuries ⁷⁹ —and others have to pay rent for a window or a room, and all must compensate for the hours spent without clients. Sex workers’ net wages are therefore extremely variable. Not only do they fluctuate daily, but a great deal depends on individual circumstances and the economic climate. So while it is true that sex workers can potentially make a good living, it all hinges on their operating expenses vs. turnover, as with any other small business.

Unfortunately, we have little information regarding prostitutes’ average number of clients or the length of time between them. What we do know is that many prostitutes are not employed in the sector full-time; instead, they often combine sex work with another job, or only occasionally use prostitution to supplement wages earned elsewhere. Quantitative data is not available for historic or contemporary Bruges alone, but in a survey conducted in the present-day provinces of East and West Flanders as a whole, 13 per cent of sex workers indicated that prostitution is not their primary means of support and 29 per cent declared that prostitution is not their only source of income. ⁸⁰ Presumably, these proportions were much higher in previous centuries, when combining several occupations was a more common survival strategy. Nearly all eighteenth-century prostitutes interrogated in Bruges stated that they had some other form of employment, and while such claims have to be interpreted within the judicial context, there is no reason to assume that the occupations they provided to the court were not practised at all, particularly among streetwalkers. In all likelihood, full-time prostitution was most common among those working in brothel houses, but even under those circumstances there may not have been enough customers to support women without additional income. And indeed, there were brothel workers who had other employment; Anna Helders, who lived in De Vlagge (The Flag) brothel, for instance, informed the court that she worked part-time as both a fille de joie and domestic servant. ⁸¹ In nineteenth-century Bruges, registered prostitutes were not permitted to have a second job, but that does not mean that those working illicitly did not combine occupations or that those in official brothels did not do so as well. Certainly data from the eighteenth century and today make it clear that flexibility was and still is crucial in the prostitution sector.

Conclusion

We can draw two main conclusions from this brief history of prostitution in Bruges. First, the sector is characterized by a remarkable degree of long-term stability. Although at first sight there seem to have been many changes, most of the developments are in line with general societal evolutions or represent continuity in another guise. For example, legislation progressed from criminalization to regulation to abolition, but in the end all the changes were merely different approaches to controlling prostitution—a profession still considered a “problem”, one with which the authorities continue to struggle. The number of migrants working in the sector has increased substantially, but so has the number of migrants in the overall population. The territory of prostitution networks has grown, but overall mobility has increased quite extensively as well. Public solicitation has disappeared and the sector’s different branches have grown more distinct, but at the same time labour demarcations in general have become more pronounced. Even the prices for sexual services have remained remarkably constant when compared to daily wages, as have the sums that dependent prostitutes are expected to give to intermediaries. Individual revenues are not constant but there is no evidence to suggest that they ever have been, and meanwhile, the hourly wage earning potential remains considerably higher than that of other occupations. This overall continuity also suggests that prostitution in Bruges does not differ substantially from the sector elsewhere and that what changes it has undergone merely correspond to the city’s own evolution, most notably with regard to its size.

The second conclusion is that while the sector shows a high degree of continuity as a whole, individual circumstances have always been subject to a great deal of variability. Some women fall victim to exploiters, others make their own arrangements with intermediaries, and still others work entirely independently. So while forced prostitution and abuses do take place, this is not the general state of affairs. Trafficking networks are similarly diverse. Some women were brought to Bruges to work as prostitutes without their consent, but most already had experience in the sex trade before they took up such long journeys and either agreed with travel proposals when they were made or were seeking opportunities to move. Working situations and wages have remained diverse as well. Lastly, the prostitution sector has internal divisions which mirror the existing hierarchies and classes in society, and prostitutes’ profiles are also quite diverse as a result. Migrants and locals, rich and poor, young and old, single and attached: all work in the sex industry. Yet some groups, such as migrants, the young, and the poor have always been overrepresented among prostitute populations, which explains our current stereotypes regarding sex workers. However, it does not then follow that all prostitution is the result of force or the exploitation of the vulnerable. As this brief essay has shown, some women took their lives into their own hands, deciding to become prostitutes for their own reasons.