Gone Medieval - Medieval Sex Work & Brothels

Episode Date: August 4, 2026

**WARNING: This episode contains explicit language and sexual content How did prostitution become so visible in medieval towns? How could sex work flourish, sometimes in the very same buildings as schools, churches and markets?Prostitutes were a familiar presence in medieval cities, raising fascinating questions about morality, religion, law and urban life.Dr. Eleanor Janega is joined by Dr. Kate Lister, host of our sister podcast Betwixt the Sheets, to uncover a surprising world where ideals and reality often sat uneasily side by side.Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. Audio editors are Ella Blaxhill and Amy Haddow, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week, PLUS early access ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanorianica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades.

We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were. And how we got here. According to Jacques de Vietrie, a theologian in 13th century, Paris, the city had a problem. This man of God was driven to despair because, as he put it, prostitutes were everywhere in the streets and neighborhoods of the city, seeking to treat. drag passing clerics by force into their brothels. If the clerics refused to enter, they immediately shouted after them, Sodomite! In one and the same building there might be a school upstairs and a brothel downstairs.

While in the upper part, the masters taught their pupils. In the lower part, the prostitutes plied their nefarious trade. In one part, the prostitutes quarreled with each other and their pimps, And the other part, the scholars argued on scholarly matters. To modern listeners, this seems astounding, even if it is perhaps a little overblown to make a particular religious point. But from a medieval standpoint, this was all pretty par for the course in a truly grand city. But how did such a situation come to pass?

And how could such a world exist within the theoretical holy confines of medieval Christendom? I'm Dr. Eleanorianaga, and today on Gone Medieval from History Hit, I'm delighted to be revisiting a chat I had back in March 2024 with the inimitable Dr. Kate Lister. Most of our sister podcast betwixt the sheets. Kate's latest book is Flick, a fascinating and irreverent history of female sexual pleasure. And she's also the author of Harlots, Horrors, and Hackabouts, a history of sex for sale. Kate and I talked about medieval sex work and the complex economic and social realities that existed alongside the best intentions of a theoretically religious society.

And just a little warning, when Kate and I get together, the language and conversation can be a little fruity. So if you have young or sensitive ears who usually join you to listen to Gone Medieval, you might want to wait till after the watershed. before giving this one a listen. Enjoy.

Well, well, well, if it isn't Kate Lister. Hello. I love this for me. I absolutely love this for me because as the author of the fabulous Harlitz Hors and Hackabouts a history of sex for sale, we're going to talk about one of our very favorite subjects today,

which is sex work in the medieval period. A fascinating subject, one of my favorites. Yeah, I really can't get enough of it because it's such an interesting theological problem, right? And it's also a way of managing urbanity. And it's a way of, you know, like looking after how people behave in large groups. And there are so many parts of just common life that it touches as well as, you know, intellectual life actually, really, right?

Yeah. For me, the history of sex work, and it doesn't really matter what time period you're looking at, but it says an awful lot about that respective cultures' attitudes to sex, to women, to commerce, to censorship. Because the figure of the sex worker, she's almost always gendered as a woman, and she becomes this sort of repository of all these anxieties and concerns and fears. And there's never been one approach that's got it a quote-unquote right. You'd have thought that they'd have worked out.

Maybe we should just leave them alone, just give them some protection under the law, stop people being jerks to them and kind of let them crack on. But when you look at the history of sex work, it's very cyclical. You see that coming back is wherever you are, the authorities seem to move through periods of uneasy toleration, and then there's a clamp down, and then there's laws, fines, punishments, banishment, all these horrible things. they might go as far as expulsion in some cultures.

I don't think they did it in the medieval period, but in some it was that you'd be put to death. And then kind of it gives way again to an uneasy toleration again. And you see this cycling all throughout history. But medieval sex work is particularly fascinating because they do tie themselves up in these quandaries of, is it okay, is it not okay? What should we do about it?

Is it the woman's fault? Is it the man's fault? What does God think about all of this? And it's just they get themselves into, such knots with it, relentlessly. It starts really early, doesn't it? Because it starts, I mean, even before the medieval period, right? When we really want to think about it, it's St. Augustine's got a lot to answer for in this,

doesn't it? St. Augustine is one of the religious philosophers, scholars, people who his thoughts on this gets dragged up a lot throughout the medieval period. I don't think he's the only one to say this kind of stuff, but basically what he says is that prostitution is like a sewer in a palace. It's ugly, but it's necessary. And if you get rid of it, then everything will overflow with awfulness. And the fact that he just compared sex workers to a sewer seems to have escaped everybody for a long time.

They all went, yeah, that's a good point. Augustine, well done. And so that becomes this rhetoric that people throughout the medieval period in Britain and, in fact, all across Europe return to again and again is this idea. that we don't like it, but it's necessary. And if we don't have sex workers for these virile young men to turn to, that they'll become horribly and absurdly deranged, or worse, gay. That argument crops up in Italy quite a lot.

Yeah, it's interesting, right, because it's often linked really specifically to cities, right? Because that's when you get all of these young men who are unmarried, right? So when you're building a city or something like that, you need a lot of laborers. cathedrals don't build of themselves, and a lot of the time, there are more jobs than there are people. So you have young men kind of coming in from the outside, and that's where the real worry is, isn't it? And it's really interesting thing to me, too, because I find it's so funny that they justify the need for sex workers because they're like, oh, gosh, well, if these guys don't have someone to have sex with, then they're just going to go crazy and they're going to burn the city down, right? That's the argument, yeah. But then it's like, how does that see at the same time with the medieval understanding of women as like the sexually aggressive ones?

And I'm like, guys, I don't understand how you're squaring the circle, right? Because on the one hand, it's like, oh, well, you know how women are? Yeah. It's on their minds 24-7. But men, they will burn the city down. They will. It's a very odd state. It comes to distance that can get themselves into.

Because the other thing that you see cropping up is not only the argument that, look, if we don't have women that are willing to have sex for money, then the men will become derange. That or gay. That crops up. But the other rhetoric that you have going all through that is if we don't have sex workers, then quote unquote, good women will be in danger. You see that one cropping up a lot. So again, it's this strange state of cognitive dissidents where on one hand, medieval science tells us that women are far more lusty and uncontrollable than men. But then also you got this idea of good women seems to come into this. this, good women and bad women, I'd love to sit down with a medieval person and go, can you explain this to me? Because I don't quite get what is going on here at all. And it's interesting, too, because even when we're thinking about, from a religious standpoint, good women and bad women, there's always the best woman, which is everyone's imaginary mommy, right, the Virgin Mary. She's amazing because it's like, she never even had sex, but could still be a mommy. Well done, Mary. Like, everyone, we're out of applause. And then there's the worst.

kind of woman who is a harlot. This is then Mary Magdalene before she converts or there's a lot of the so-called prostitute saints, right? There's Afra of Augsburgs. Jezebel. She wasn't a saint, was she? Jezebel, Mary of Egypt.

And then there's also these like apocalyptic figures because, right, in the medieval imagination, right, there's the whore of Babylon. Yes. Who is one of the people who's going to come at the end of the world and you know you know it's over for you because this hot chick is going to come riding a dragon and drink the blood of the innocence.

And it's like the worst thing that you can possibly imagine a woman is, is a sex worker, right? Yeah. When you get people selling sex and they're being talked about in medieval sources, again, we're limited by the sources about who's saying what, what has survived to us and so forth. But what you don't really get is much of an understanding of the fact that these are just predominantly women, although men were selling sex too, is they're doing it because they need to make money. and they need to survive. And if we don't make money, they're screwed. And it's the same reason why people sell sex and have jobs to this very day

is that it allows you to be able to make money in a very short space of time. Unlike any other job, there is no qualifying age, skill level, skill set that you need to. Anyone can do it and you can earn some money pretty quickly. Please, listeners, don't run out and do this on my recommendation. but it's simply the point that if you find yourself in a situation where you need money, sex work has always been there, but you don't get any sense that these people might be doing it because they need the damn money. You get more of a sense of they're doing it because they're insanely horny and just naturally wicked

and almost as if they're so lusty, of course they're going to go in a brothel and the fact that they get paid for it is just this icing on the cake, which is completely bonkers and it's much more of a male fan. see than anything else, that these people are doing this because they really, really, really, really like sex instead of really, really, really like being able to eat. Oh, yeah, I mean, you're bang on here, I think, right? Like, this is part of the Mary of Egypt thing, right? And, you know, she's one of the ones who, she's a very, very successful sex worker,

and she makes all this money, but she's in it for the love of the game. Yeah. Like a big part of it. It's like at one point in time, she goes on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and she's just giving it away for free on the boat on the way over. And it's also a big theological question where theologians will be sitting around. And when they debate sex work, which they do a lot. Endlessly.

Sometimes people will say, oh, yeah, well, you are a prostitute, their term not mine, if you have had, you know, more than three sexual partners and your woman, that's just, it has nothing to do with money being exchanged. It has to do with the fact that you as a woman have had sex with more than just your husband. And that's it. So it's over for you, right? Yeah. It becomes a very flexible term.

Like, whore, you can still deploy that insult to this day and have no idea if anybody's ever actually sold sex for money. It's just a rather handy insult. And it really depends who you're talking to of how they actually define this. But the definition of what is sex work is something that is still an issue to this very day. And it's haunted every attempt to regulate sex work throughout history. Because when you think I'm going to regulate sex work if you wanted to, you were that person, and there's been many of them. But immediately the person that you think of

is somebody, they work in a street, or they're in a brothel, they do this full time, this is how they make their money, and it's very transactional. But the reality is there's so much grey amongst this. What you're talking about there is like full time, full service sex work. That's what we'd call it today. But this is something that people might drift into temporarily. This is something that people might use to just top up an income. How do we square kept mistresses within this? because is that not somebody that is exchanging sex for money or just, you know, royal mistresses, servants that are having sex with the master of the house?

You know, it's an abusive thing, but perhaps they're doing it for goods and gain. It's very, very difficult to pin it down as to what do you mean when you say somebody selling sex or a whore or a common woman, as they might have said, in the medieval period. And part of that is that you do get these subtary laws that come in, dictating what you are a sex worker

so you are definitely going to dress like this and one of them is 30, I think it was in London and they had to wear a raid hood which is a striped hood and there's detail in that but it can't have any lining and it can't have any fur trim

and then they were it's just really shitty like stripy coat but that's all part of this like we're trying to identify who these people are and it's actually very very difficult to do that. And that's a really interesting point as well, you know, when you get this hint there, right,

when they're like, well, you've got to wear this hood of Ray. And I was like, okay, all right, well, I'll wear the hood of Ray. But it can't be lined. All right, well, that indicates that some of these women are making money. It's like a tacit admission, right? That it can be a pretty good job. I'd never thought about that before, but you're absolutely right. If they're having to put caveats in there of like, you dare make this look good. Don't you dare accessorize this? But we know that sex work allowed people to make a lot of money in a very short space of time. But they don't like to admit that quite clearly. Yeah.

And it's an interesting one too because I think within this, because of the amount of money that like women are able to make, part of the social pushback against it certainly is that, well, oh no, this can make things really topsy to me because say you're an ordinary woman, you're a peasant, right? Like 80% of society. And you managed to run off from your lord and you get to a city. And then you might just say, okay, well, I guess that I'm going to do sex work because, you know, what are my specialized skills? You know, I've got the same skills that most women have, which is like brewing, baking. Got to earn money. Yeah, and I've got to earn money somehow. So, okay, well, here we go.

I'm doing sex work. You can, in theory, get paid very well. And then you've completely subverted social expectations for a peasant woman, right? And there's one thing that the medieval period really doesn't like its uppity peasants. And certainly upity women. I think you're absolutely right. I've always thought that about the whole history of sex work is, why should this be so stigmatized? And it's stigmatized to this very day. I mean, we've got very unhealthy weird attitudes about sex and that absolutely plays into it. But I'm convinced that one of the reasons sex workers are so stigmatized is because they are predominantly women, again, not exclusively. But it was a woman-dominated industry that allowed women access to social mobility, not. Nothing else would. If you look at someone like Nell Gwynne who was born in the back streets of London in absolute poverty and then manage quite literally to shag her way to the top and become the mistress of the king, I thought about it, thought about it. I cannot think of another job profession career that was open to women that has that level of social mobility attached to it. And again, the caveat, Nell Gwyn is Nell Gwynn. For every one of her, there are millions of people that had an absolutely rotten time of it. But I. think that part of that stigma is the threat to the order. I really do because it allows them

in social mobility. It allows them to be independent of men. It allows them to run their own business. And men are the clients and they hold a lot of power. I'm convinced that a lot of the stigma is the threat to the order that it presents. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I mean, of course, there is specifically within a medieval context. Medieval Europe is a predominantly, predominantly, predominantly, Christian society, right? And Christianity has a super uneasy relationship with pleasure and sex, right? Yes.

It's very easy to think of the medieval Christian church as being fiercely anti-sex, but I've always thought of them of people of like, well, someone who's anti-sex, they sure think about sex a lot. Erotic, ironic, isn't it? Yeah. They're coming on and on. Are you sure you don't intersex? Because, like, we're really thinking about it an awful lot here, guys.

but pleasure is a very, very difficult one for them to square because you get this sort of anti-sex rhetoric coming in towards the mid to late medieval period and a lot of it's geared towards women but they cannot escape this bind that they get into which is that people have to have sex, they have to have heterosexual sex or we're going to run out of little Christians pretty quick.

So they come up with all these rules as sort of sex isn't sinful but the pleasure is. if you're having terrible sex So feel free Feel free You help yourself But obviously it has to be Within marriage

And then I know you've spoken before But they come up with all these rules It can't be on a feast day It can't be on a Sunday It can't be on Whitson It can't be before A period after a period

Before like really when you boil it down to it It's like two Tuesdays throughout the entire year And even then You can't enjoy yourself But then there's also At the same time A worry there too

Because one of the things that is understood in terms of medicine at the time is that for conception to happen, they think that women have semen like men. Like now we understand medical sciences at bouncing so fast that people at graduate medical school by the time they do half the stuff they'll have learnt throughout that short period will be obsolete

because it goes that quick. But for much of our history, we just went, well, the ancient Greeks said so and we will never, ever change this again. So the idea that women made semen or didn't make semen, I think that was Hippocrates or is one of his buds. It was this idea that women were cold and kind of clammy and men were lovely and dry and warm. And that our bodies were trying to make semen, but we were so rubbish, we'd just make menstrual blood. Whereas men's bodies were the perfect temperature.

So presumably they must have had menstrual blood, but they managed to turn their blood into semen. and all the Greek doctors were like and that is the perfect well done you made semen hurrah look at you you just sitting there making that semen

and they viewed women as almost like jars that this semen got put into and then a baby would grow it wasn't that the womb was this like living well they did think it was living but it was like this receptacle

the magic semen gets put into it and that's when all the magic happens it's almost like the womb is just like a jar to hold it that's kind of how they viewed it So yeah, the medieval people were still on this idea of hot and cold and faulty seam and all this stuff. You need to have like the right amount of pleasure duress acts so that everyone jizzes. Then you mix that together and then you get like, bada bada bada boom, there's a baby, right?

Yes. But this real issue too with pleasure, right? Because the way medieval people talk about, and again, this is St. Augustine, right? The way that they talk about pleasure as well and they're like, and pleasure is so bad. and pleasure is a function of the fall of man, right? Like, that's the original sin. You know, Eve eats the apple in the garden. And now we talk about it.

They go, oh, and she realizes they're naked. But for medieval people, they're like, she realizes she's naked, and she's like, oh, that's sexy. And that's the sin. And I guess sex work becomes, again, this laser focus of all of this weird discourse because you're not paying to have sex in order to have a baby. is the antithesis to all of this medieval, what temperature are you?

Are you too hot? Are you cold? Don't have too much pleasure. Don't make a baby, but don't enjoy it. Sex work is outside of all of that, and it's everything that this moral quandary opposes. It's sex for fun. They can't be doing it.

It's sex only for pleasure. And worse than that, for profit, for some people. So they took a seriously dim view of things. So speaking of, the humoral theory in all of these things, what do we know about sort of sexual? health for women at the time. Okay, so we know some things. Again, we're limited by the sources that survive.

So, for example, there is a document that survives from the 15th century, so late medieval, and it's called the ordinance touching on the government of the stewholders in Southwark under the direction of the Bishop of Winchester. So the Bishop of Winchester owned the land that the Red Light District was built on, basically. And the women who worked there were called Winchester Geese. It was all like a nudge, nudge, hint. But this document, it pretends it's from the 12th century, is actually from the 15th.

It draws up a lot of rules that these women are allowed to live by. And some of them are bonkers, things like they can't wear aprons. I don't know why that's a thing. But they do have some caveats in there that they can't work if they're in ill health. They can't work if they are, it's called it the burning sick. which I'm going to assume is an STI, but these rules aren't really set down because they're trying to keep the women healthier. They're set down to sort of protect the clients more than anything else, but it does show us there's a kind of a rudimentary concern around health, sex and catching

something and that that is something to be avoided. And it would seem that the bruffles in the Bishop's district were subject to regular inspections and that the women were subject to regular inspections as well. Again, we'd be careful before saying that, oh, isn't it nice to try to keep all these women healthy? They're not really. I think you've also kind of touched on something here that I think people get really surprised when they learn, you know, there's the bishop and all his brothels and congratulations. And the bishop of Winchester, you know, that's a really plumb position too. Winchester's really a fancy place at the time, but I think especially in the later medieval period, right, it's got to the point where cities are like, well, yeah, we don't like this. We don't think it's great that sex

work is happening, but obviously it has to happen. So here you go. Here's your official certificate stamp. Yeah. And you are the municipal brothel now. It's legal sex work. You get zoning, it would be called, and this is a time tested method. And you certainly see. You certainly seeing it being deployed across medieval Europe throughout the entire span of the medieval period and beyond. It was still being used in Renaissance Italy. It was used in France right up until the Second World War. And occasionally it was used in Lebes until very, very recently. They trialled a zoning approach here. But the idea was that, right, okay, so we're not going to be able to get rid of this. So we are going to attempt to contain it.

And they would do that by finding an area of the city, and they would just basically say it has to happen here. If it doesn't happen in here, you are in serious trouble. And occasionally in medieval records, we have documents of people that were selling sex or were hallmongering outside of where they should have been. And the penalties could be quite severe. In one of them, I think it was the 13th century,

the penalties if you're selling sex outside of the zoning area, is that you'll be put in the stocks, and you'll have your head shaved, and that it would be sort of paraded through the city and then sent back to the zoned area. So they weren't messing around. Again, that's this Augustine idea of we don't like it, but it's necessary. So we're going to attempt to try and contain it. And generally when that happens, it affords the people in their some rights,

some level of safety and laws tend to be brought in and they can be tacked. It's still not a friend to the people selling sex because there's still being. regulated by the state and they're still have to perform to their set rules but I guess it's better than being exiled

and having your nose cut off which was deployed in some places in some situations but yeah zoning was a really popular medieval tactic which is where you get

the gloriously grop-cunt lane comes from the famous medieval street I'm really close in London to where the grop cut lane was I'm kind of here at

in the city. And there are two extant ones that were zoned. So there's Love Lane, Love Lane, which is right near Guildhall. Grubcut Lane, RIP to a real one. I think we lost that, I think, at the 18th century, something like that. But I'm also right near Cock Lane, which is over by St. Bartz. And it's like just does what it says on the tin. And I think Cock Lane is one of my favorite because now if you said that, people would go, oh, you're just having a laugh. You're just having a dirty mind. And it's like, no, that's what they meant. I love that about the medieval people that they just go, no, we're just going to call it exactly what it is.

I've got some other examples. So there's Groop-Cuntling, which is just fabulous, and it turned up in a number of cities. But we also had Codpiece Alley. Apparently, Hors Lied Down was another one, which eventually got renamed to Horsley Down, which is kind of streets. I love that. Oh, cute. If there are placed with lots of brothels, it might be called something like Hors Nest or Sluts Hole, things like that.

And then eventually they all get renamed. But I suppose if the average medieval peasanty person probably wouldn't have a map, where am I going, right? Cough Galley, all of these things, haws lie down. You need something very obvious in order to find where it is, I suppose. I think it's so funny because, you know, here in London, at least half the streets in the old city are named after. it's like, yeah, that's Poultry Lane. Yeah, that's leather lane. That's Fishery.

You know, where they're just like, yeah, it's where you want fish, you go to Fish Street. Yeah. And they're like, well, it's a form of commerce, exactly, like any other. So there you go. Just say what you get. Exactly. But that is also an example of zoning. So we're going to do it, but we're going to do it there. From Prague, of course, I've got a Prague story. One of my favorite things with zoning happens at a point in time where I eat it. It's like rather the vogue to save sex workers. And, you know, especially in kind of the 14th century, where there's like a folk where it's like, oh, well, I'm going to buy out this brothel and then I'm going to give the ladies

that can all live here and be kind of nuns or whatever, but I'm closing the brothel down. And there's this guy, Master Nicholas, I think. He gets it at his head that he's going to go, like, save all these ladies from a brothel. But what he actually does is just goes into this brothel and chases them all out. And it's like, get out of here, girls.

Like, I, like, this is my brothel now. And they go to, like, the municipality. and they're like, excuse me, there's a priest in our brothel. And the city officials are like, right, you are. Nick, get out, Nicholas, like, get out. And they win. And then he goes and complains to the archbishop. And he's like, well, hey, I was just trying to like save these girls.

And they're like, well, they got a license, bro. Like, I don't know what to tell you. Like, you've got to leave them alone. But do we have a lot of examples of that of this kind of a, you know, desire to save these poor unfortunate women, right? Endlessly. That is something that you, will see throughout the history of sex work. And I'm always quite suspicious of the motives behind

them, not to impugn people that, you know, generally do want better lives and situations for people living in poverty and, you know, and people that really need help. But you do sort of get this, and it still exists today, is like people who have a purient interest in sex and women, but don't want to actually say that. So they kind of position themselves as saviors of like, well, I'm going to work very closely with you. And like William Gladstone, the Victorian Prime Minister, he's a perfect example of that. He used to go roaming in the streets at night looking for fallen women because he was so desperate to save them. Uh-huh. So were you? And you get a lot of that. I mean, the medieval conception of helping to save somebody

is probably not as helpful. A lot of it would be you need to renounce this life entirely and possibly go and live as a nun. I'm unaware of any kind of state. support to help people exit selling sex. It was much more just, these are awful punishments if we catch you doing it somewhere where we don't want to. But the idea of rescuing women, it's there the whole way, but it becomes incredibly popular and fashionable in the 19th century. You get all of these rescue societies that get set up and it's often middle-class, well-to-do women with this very particular idea of a particular person who needs saving. And often they encounter these people and realize they're not who they think that they are at all.

And then there's quite a shock. So you get that. You get like them putting rules in place. Like we will only save the most penitent. And you have to be below 25 and you can't have had any children. And basically you have to be the perfect victim. And they become very popular in the 19th century. Medieval approach is to getting women out of sex work.

It's like the most common one, right, is like go get married. Of course, they get really testy. If you are married and are. still selling sex, right? No, you can't do that. That's not allowed. There's this order that crops up in the 13th century, I think it is, called the Magdalens. Ooh. And it's like, oh, I just feel so bad about having been a sex worker. I have to devote my life to Jesus. And they're really quite hard on them. So it's a much stricter order than any of the other nuns. Not that, like it's a real cakewalk being a nun a lot of the time. But, you know, they'll beat them for all

to have reasons. For example. With both that and the Victorian approach, one of the the things that really kind of sticks in my craw is it's like, I've no doubt that some of these women did feel really terrible about having done sex work. But is that not just a function of a society that constantly tells you you're bad, you're bad, you're bad, you're bad, you're bad. Like, this is a terrible thing to do. So, of course, you're going to feel bad if everyone is telling you that constantly. And, you know, so there's this kind of like question about what does this say, I think, socially, right? When you look at something like that, you just think, What did they want from people exiting sex work, which is, again, back to this idea of like it's a very grey area a lot of the times people drift in and people drift out.

And some people will do it for a while and some people will do it for a long time. But when people are being saved, quote unquote, by the Maglind Society's or St. Nicholas, I think, didn't he say some women from going on the game? He sure is. Yeah. So isn't a sense from them of like, well, how penitent do they have to be for you to be okay with this? Like, what is the exit strategy? Are you going to beat them up for, like, years and years? And then can they just go and live a normal life?

Or do they have to spend the rest of their life in penitent resignation and being told that they're awful and horrible? I've never really understood that because, you know, my reading of the Bible isn't particularly in depth, but I'm pretty sure Jesus was okay hanging around with hookers. But I distinctly remember him saying, don't be mean to them. But that doesn't seem to have translated into the main. medieval period at all. The idea of rescuing is where would you go? I do often think about this.

What happens when you couldn't sell sex anymore? Because there will be people, you know, made absolutely played a blinder of a game and made loads of money. And the trajectory seems to be is that you start selling sex in a brothel and then eventually you might become the madam of the brothel. But I imagine then, as in now, that the stigma around it is so, severe and the sanctions around it are so severe. How do you exit that? Like, how do you integrate yourself back into, quote, unquote, good society when you're carrying all of this judgment and baggage and stigma? The wonder it's so hard for people to exit. I don't know. I've never seen a record of a medieval person that was like, I did this for a while and then I stopped and I just

decided to make cider instead, or whatever it is. One of my favorite groups of, quote unquote, penitent sex workers. I think this is 14th century and they're in southern France and basically a rescue nunnery gets set up for them and it's essentially just like a retirement home. Oh, I'm so glad to hear that. Like an entire brothel just goes, yeah, okay, no, we're done. We're done. And they go live in this other house together and they're like, yeah, no, we don't sell sex work anymore. And basically like the entire town pitched in and they're like, well, I guess if we really don't want them doing this, well, they're going to have to live somehow. And so they like built them a house. They like essentially had a pension and then the ladies were like, yeah, no, I'm retired now, yeah.

That's amazing. That's so progressive. I love that because that's the thing about all of these like attempts to abolish sex work and to stop people doing it and moralizing. It's like, well, okay, bud, what plan do you have in place for them then? Because they still need to earn money. They still need to feed themselves. They still need to support their families. What's the plan? You know, so the fact that they would have a retirement home, I think that that makes me so happy. I thought it's really cute. It's great. Like the girls are just hanging out now. They're like, no, we're done.

The girls are just hanging out. Oh. Yeah. It's remarkable that one. But I do think that it's nice because it does show us, you know, some pragmatism. Granted, it's a whole spectrum of people in a thousand years, right? And, you know, people get really bonkers too. But there are these possibilities.

But the high and late Middle Ages, you have, like, the series of municipal brothels. You have, like, stamps and everything. But then at the turn into. the early modern period then right that all goes out the window doesn't it? Oh,

Henry the 8th decided that he was the person to start telling people about sexual moral. Oh yeah, this guy, like a noted not horny guy Henry the 8th, right?

Yeah, the guy who have completely normal sexual practices. Real monk or Henry, yeah. Right, absolutely, yeah. He decided that he was going to

basically liquidate the Southwark area and get all of the brothels. So what it was is it was kind of dressed up as this. We're worried about their souls and it's a very, very moral thing. But it wasn't. It was because Henry had broken with the church and he wanted the land that the Bishop of Winchester owned. And in order to get it, he was going to have to kick him out along with everybody who was working on that piece of land. So the bankside stews were ordered to be closed and this. royal procession comes into the area, accompanied by trumpeters and herald's arms, and they

basically announced that, the king considering that the dissolute and miserable persons who have been suffered to dwell beside London and elsewhere in places called the Stu's have lately so increased and engender such corruption among the people as to be an intolerable annoyance to the Commonwealth. Youth being there elude by fleshy lusts and evil-disposed persons, conspiring robberies has with advice of his council decided to extinguish such abominable license. And he gave them 10 days to pack up and get out. Real moral crusader. Great.

But they didn't abolish it. Of course he didn't. All he did is that they went back into the city because so that it was on the outskirts of the city, they went back into the city and they just went to different places. That's all that happened. I mean, there is no way of abolishing sex work. I mean, like the Victorians tried real hard, didn't they? There's lots of people have tried.

Yeah, and it's just not going to happen. But, yeah, I find it so interesting. There's always some guy, you know, there's always some guy, and it's usually some rich guy explaining what women are supposed to be doing without ever giving a thought to, well, I don't know, maybe I could help them out, isn't it? Exactly. It was just this right pack-up under the guise of morality that obviously it's become such a nuisance and so horrible that we need you to all go away right now,

conveniently exiting the land that Henry now wants to claim because he's so moral. It's just like gone. You assholes. You know, I got to say one of the reasons why I really love studying sex workers in the middle ages is it's such a great way of learning about regular women, like just normal women, because they show up on the records all the time because everyone is just constantly thinking about them.

Just normal, a bunch of guys who aren't supposed to have sex just thinking about them all the time. Yep, I do. But it's just a thing. that ordinary women do all the time. And I like when I get to see ordinary people. You know, I hate Henry the Eighth. I hate Kings and, you know, people who just come in and boss everyone around while, you know, behaving like absolute pets. Whereas this is a bunch of women who are clever and they're thinking on their feet and they're doing the best they can in a really restricted society. And I just think they're cool. I like my sex workers. I think that irregular ladies are cool.

That's my takeaway. I agree completely. And I don't want to pretend for a second that they were having the bestest time ever. But in medieval society, it was pretty rough no matter what you were doing or who you were. And people turning to sex work and using sex work as a way to support themselves,

they were probably playing the best of the hand that they got dealt. And I think it really takes something like we've established the heft of the stigma and the thou shalt not surrounding it. And yet it endures. And whenever you've got a persecuted community, you get a really strong sense of community and solidarity.

And if I had a time machine, I would go back definitely to the medieval brothel to just ask questions. I just want to know. We know some names that crop up here and there and we've got things like the ordinance of the service of the stews to tell us some of the rules and things. I'd just love to sit down and like, how does this work? How do you feel about it?

What brought you here? Are you going to be here for a long time? What do you charge? What are you? I would just love to know the answers to those questions because they have escaped us. But I'm sure that then, as now, sex workers were a very vibrant community of people who could stand up for themselves. That is, I think, the perfect place to leave a wonderful discussion, as always. Where can the good listeners of Gone Medieval get more from you? Oh, it's so much fun talking to you, Eleanor. They can drop by and hear my podcast Betwixt the Sheets, which is your sister podcast by The History Hit Family.

If you want to know more about the history of sex work, my book, Hors Harlots and Hackabouts is available for sale. And I think I talk about it as well in my other book, A Curious History of Text. Fantastic, Kate. Thank you so much, as always, for stopping by. Oh, any time, it was my pleasure. My thanks again to the brilliant Dr. Kate Lister.

Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including Kate's brilliant new documentary, Dicking About, and my recent film with Matt Lewis, The Ascent to Power, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II, as well as ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com forward slash subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts. and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.