Sex for Sale in Florence

chapter 4 Sex for Sale in Florence Michela Turno Introduction Despite the often heated debates at the national and local levels about prostitution that have been ongoing since the 1950s, commercial sex has only quite recently begun to receive more attention among Italian historians. This is apparent in the lack of studies covering the last four centuries of Florentine prostitution. While the most relevant publications devoted to this subject focus on the late mediaeval and Renaissance periods,1 none fully addresses the seventeenth or the eighteenth century,2 and only one study explores the sex trade from the Restoration to 1888.3 All this research is mainly based on documents preserved at the Archivio di Stato in Florence, from the Ufficiali dell’Onestà (Office of Decency 1403–1747) to the Buongoverno (1814–1848), and from the Prefettura del Compartimento Fiorentino (1848–1858 and 1859–1864) to the Prefettura (1865–1952) and Questura (1860–1888). To date, no studies have investigated male prostitution which, according to Michael Rocke, was a well-known phenomenon in Florence starting in the * I would like to thank Franco Nudi and Nicoletta Vernillo of the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome for their help in going through the ministerial files, and I would also like to thank Christian De Vito and Giovanni Focardi for their comments, critiques, and suggestions. Por- tions of this article have been drawn from two contributions previously published by the Annali di Storia di Firenze and by the publisher Giunti. 1 See Richard Trexler, “La Prostitution florentine au xve siècle: Patronages et clienteles”, An- nales, 1 (1981), pp. 983–1015; Maria Serena Mazzi, “Il mondo della prostituzione nella Firenze tardo medievale”, Ricerche Storiche, 14 (1984), pp. 337–363; Prostitute e lenoni nella Firenze del Quattrocento (Milan, 1991). 2 On the institutions created with the aim of reforming former prostitutes and providing a ref- uge for married prostitutes, see Sherrill Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums since 1500: From Refuges for Ex-prostitutes to Shelters for Battered Women (New York [etc.], 1992); John K. Brackett, “The Florentine Onestà and the Control of Prostitution, 1403–1680”, Sixteenth Century Journal, 2 (1993), pp. 273–300. 3 Michela Turno, “Il malo esempio”: Donne scostumate e prostituzione nella Firenze dell’Ottocento (Florence, 2003) and Michela Turno, “Postriboli in Firenze: Un’inchiesta del prefetto del 30 novembre 1849”, Annali di Storia di Firenze, 2 (2007), pp. 233–246. For the period from unifica- tion until 1914, see Mary Gibson, Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860–1915 (Columbus, 1999). © Michela Turno, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004346253_005 Michela Turno - 9789004346253 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-NDDownloaded 4.0 license. from Brill.com09/24/2021 12:47:09PM via free access 86 Turno fourteenth century.4 Likewise, no studies concerning twentieth-century prostitution have been carried out so far.5 Twentieth-century archival documents, such as those preserved at the Archivio Centrale di Stato in Rome, do not seem to have information that could provide good insights into the last century. The relative paucity of sources is mainly the result of the partial reform of the regulation of prostitution dating back to 1860 and definite abrogation in 1958. Following the early feminists’ battles against regulation, some measures were introduced in 1888 which limited the state to regulating places of prostitution but not the persons involved. However, it is possible that health and police statistics and, in particular, press reports might offer a very general picture of the trade in the early 1950s when the socialist senator Lina Merlin presented to parliament her draft bill on the abolition of regulation. The details of prostitutes’ working conditions, family situation, media- tion, and profiles are largely unknown, but could perhaps to some extent be gathered from court records and newspaper articles. Florentine non-profit organizations, such as the c.a.t. social co-operative and Associazione Arco- baleno, provide additional sources of information, as they produced note- worthy documentation between the late 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century. These organizations offer medical and legal support to both those who want to leave the business of sold sex and those who decide to keep working as streetwalkers. Given the state of research and the nature and lack of available sources, providing a satisfying overview of prostitution in Florence from the seventeenth century to the present is not an easy task. However, this chapter will attempt to draw a reasonable, though necessarily in- complete, picture based primarily on what the law has said about prostitution, archival findings, and what is known about the social and economic structure of Florentine society. The Seventeenth Century: Laws, Definitions, and Social Profiles Until 1680, prostitution in Florence, which was then the capital of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, was under the administration and control of the Onestà 4 Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence (Oxford, 1996). 5 As far as I know, only two studies have focused on late-twentieth century Florentine prostitution: Laura Lucani, “Criminalità femminile: informazione e ricerca nell’area fiorentina degli anni ‘80” (Unpublished m.a., University of Florence, 1989) and Raffaele Palumbo, La tua città sulla strada: Cronache di ordinarie prostituzioni (San Domenico di Fiesole, 1997). Michela Turno - 9789004346253 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 12:47:09PM via free access <UN> Sex for Sale in Florence 87 (hereafter Office of Decency). Created in 1403, this magistracy was to “establish brothels in the city, licence prostitutes and pimps to work in them, regu- late their activities, and adjudicate criminal cases involving the women under [its] supervision.”6 At the same time, it was expected to generate revenue by granting licenses and permission to meretrici (prostitutes) on the basis of a fee and the imposition of pecuniary penalties.7 Over the course of three centuries, the magistracy imposed several restrictions on prostitutes’ freedom but also granted some concessions, such as protection from other magistracies, immunity from prosecution for debt, and the right to bring injustices before the Office. In fact, according to Cohen, “Prostitutes enjoyed more direct access to the courts than did their respectable female contemporaries, who had to rely on male representatives to bring their cause to court.”8 Moreover, the Office of Decency was not infrequently asked to establish whether “loose-living wives and spinsters” or “a woman with only one lover […] were to be counted as pub- lic prostitutes.”9 The decisions of the court varied from one woman to another; while some were punished, others were exonerated. By the end of sixteenth century, however, the Office of Decency had already tightened control over both the resources and the movement of prostitutes. Permission to traverse the city at night or change residences had to be pur- chased from the Office. Any violation was duly fined but “exemptions to most of these regulations were also sold to those able to pay, which was a quicker method to generate revenue than was the collection of fines.”10 Moreover, in line with this trend, registered prostitutes who were married and could generally have expected to escape prosecution for adultery saw a deterioration in their position. In 1635 the grand-ducal government allowed the criminal magistracy, the Otto di Guardia e Balia, to charge registered women who were married with adultery if they did not withdraw from their “shameless life” and return to their husbands.11 Adultery was certainly considered to be worse than prostitution as 6 Rocke, Forbidden Friendships, p. 31. According to Cohen, “Early modern Tuscany rec- ognized several variations on the general term meretrice. They spoke of streetwalkers (cantoniere), brothel prostitutes (meretrici in postribulo), parlour whores (donne di par- tito), and courtesans (cortigiane).” Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums, p. 46. 7 Brackett, “The Florentine Onestà”, pp. 273–300, 281–285. 8 Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums, p. 44. 9 Ibid., pp. 47–48. Generally, an anonymous denunciation was enough to raise suspicions which would lead to an investigation. See Andrea Zorzi, “The Judicial System in Florence in The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries”, in Trevor Dean and K.J.P. Lowe (eds), Crime, Society and the Law in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 41–58. 10 Brackett, “The Florentine Onestà”, pp. 273–300, 295–296. 11 Ibid., p. 298; Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums, p. 49. Michela Turno - 9789004346253 Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 12:47:09PM via free access <UN> 88 Turno it undermined the institution of the family and challenged male prerogatives. Even so, this and other edicts making it possible for husbands and relatives to denounce married prostitutes had few consequences in practice. Cohen sug- gests that “prostitution might seem to be not a sin but a rational strategy, nec- essary along with marriage, for women to make economic ends meet.”12 Laws attempting to control married prostitutes were as ineffective as those decrees concerning unregistered prostitutes and suspect women. More numer- ous than any other, unregistered prostitutes were perceived to be an additional serious problem but, at the same time, an additional source of revenue. By buying their own immunity, they could avoid wearing the prostitute’s identify- ing sign (a piece of yellow ribbon) and they didn’t have to work in bordellos or reside on those streets designated for prostitution.13 They could enjoy a degree of freedom as long as they behaved with “apparent modesty and decency.”14 They could preserve their reputations and independence and move about free- ly, increasing their opportunities for better business.

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