chapter 4 Sex for Sale in Florence
Michela Turno
Introduction
Despite the often heated debates at the national and local levels about prosti- tution that have been ongoing since the 1950s, commercial sex has only quite recently begun to receive more attention among Italian historians. This is ap- parent in the lack of studies covering the last four centuries of Florentine pros- titution. While the most relevant publications devoted to this subject focus on the late mediaeval and Renaissance periods,1 none fully addresses the seven- teenth 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.com09/29/2021 05:12:06PM via free access 86 Turno fourteenth century.4 Likewise, no studies concerning twentieth-century pros- titution 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 prostitu- tion: 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).
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(hereafter Office of Decency). Created in 1403, this magistracy was to “estab- lish 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 cen- turies, the magistracy imposed several restrictions on prostitutes’ freedom but also granted some concessions, such as protection from other magistracies, im- munity 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 general- ly 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.
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12 Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums, p. 50. 13 “What was for Florence a new method of controlling prostitution was initiated in 1544 […] with the first creation of official streets of residence for prostitutes”. However, the wealthiest prostitutes “could live where they pleased.” Brackett, “The Florentine Onestà”, pp. 273–300, 291–292. 14 Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums, p. 51. 15 Ibid., p. 55. 16 Ibid., p. 60; Brackett,“The Florentine Onestà”, pp. 273–300, 296; Giulia Calvi, History of a Plague Year: The Social and the Imaginary in Baroque Florence (Berkeley, 1989), p. 134. 17 Cohen also reports that “very few of these women left evidence of having had children.” Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums, p. 57. 18 Trexler, “La Prostitution”, pp. 983–1015, 985–988.
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19 Brackett, “The Florentine Onestà”, pp. 273–300, 299. More precisely, there were 390 Flo- rentine women, 258 Tuscan women (from Medici territories), 65 north Italians and 34 south Italians. 20 Ibid., pp. 298–299. 21 “Over 80 per cent of women whose occupations are listed were employed in textiles while the remainder were scattered over a number of other occupations such as making cloth- ing (5.9 per cent), prostitution (4 per cent), domestic work (3 per cent), and a variety of activities ranging from making gold thread to selling liquor.” Judith C. Brown and Jordan Goodman, “Women and Industry in Florence”, The Journal of Economic History, 40 (1980), pp. 73–80, 78. 22 Ibid. 23 Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums, p. 55. 24 Calvi, History of a Plague Year, pp. 133–134. For the economic decline of the wool and silk industry, see the bibliographic reference in Richard A. Goldthwaite, Economy of Renais- sance Florence (Baltimore, 2009), pp. 268, 282–283. See also Furio Diaz, Il Granducato di Toscana (Turin, 1976), in particular pp. 388–408. 25 Brackett, “The Florentine Onestà”, pp. 273–300, 296–298.
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The Eighteenth Century
The lack of available research makes it difficult to offer up a detailed account of prostitutes and prostitution in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Florence. Nevertheless, some sources and legislation on this matter, as well as an initial superficial exploration of the available sources, allow us to out- line some general considerations. The Office of Decency was absorbed by the city’s chief criminal court in 1680 but, so far as is known, no substantial chang- es were made to the regulatory and fiscal system of prostitution until the late eighteenth century. There is no doubt, however, that Cosimo iii de Medici’s reign (1670–1723) was characterized by bigotry and corruption. His decisions influenced, to a greater or lesser degree, his subjects’ lives, including the lives of prostitutes. In a burst of anti-Semitism, for instance, he enacted several laws against the Tuscan Jewish population. Among them, he banned all “sexual interactions between Jews and non-Jews (which targeted Jewish men who paid for Christian prostitutes).”26 After the short reign of Gian Gastone, the last Medici grand duke, Tuscany came under the control of Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine, whose policy on pros- titution tended towards repression. Known for having abolished capital pun- ishment and torture in 1786, Pietro Leopoldo’s efforts were also directed to the improvement and protection of public morality. In January 1777 he abolished the tax imposed on meretrici, and in 1780 he banned prostitution from Tus- can territories with the exception of Livorno. A pragmatist, Pietro Leopoldo allowed the toleration of prostitution in this important harbour and centre of trade and business. Leopoldo’s policy regarding prostitution seemed to be efficacious. By this time, Florence was already one of the main destinations of European travellers who made the Grand Tour. According to Rosemary Sweet, “references to prostitutes or ‘public women’ in Florence were extremely rare: they formed no part of the discourse around the city, unlike Naples, or Venice,
26 Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven, 2009), p. 89.
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27 Rosemary Sweet, Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy, c. 1690–1820 (Cambridge, 2012), p. 72. 28 Archivio di Stato, Florence [hereafter, asf], Commissario di quartiere (1777–1808), Quartiere di S. Giovanni, 52, 1 August 1780. 29 On the Florentine police, see Carlo Mangio, La polizia toscana: Organizzazione e criteri d’intervento (1765–1808) (Milan, 1988); Alessandra Contini, “La città regolata: Polizia e amministrazione nella Firenze leopoldina (1777–1782)”, in Istituzioni e società in Toscana nell’età moderna: Atti delle giornate di studio dedicate a Giuseppe Pansini, 2 vols, (Rome, 1994), i, pp. 426–508. 30 asf, Commissario, 29 February 1780. Viene richiesta una nota degli ecclesiastici e regolari più libertini e scandalosi, più linguacciuti, mordaci e ciarloni. Nota degli uomini e donne che sono i più libertini e scandalosi. 31 Ibid., March 1780, Nota di quelle donne che si danno per ruffiane. The second woman kept and prostituted a girl in her house.
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The Nineteenth Century: Towards the End of an Epoch
The dissolution of the Grand Duchy and the creation of the Kingdom of Etru- ria in 1799 did not bring about a change in the policy on prostitution. However, the annexation of the Tuscan territory by Napoleon brought about a significant novelty, referred to by the maire of Florence in the following terms: “since the French government [took power] those women are quartered in twenty-seven different districts of the city.”36 It is probable that the French rulers tried to introduce a new model already implemented in France that was based on the compulsory registration of prostitutes, medical examinations, and the police
32 Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums, p. 52. 33 asf, Commissario, 6 September 1780. 34 asf, Commissario, October 1780. 35 Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums, pp. 55–56. 36 Turno, “Il malo esempio”, p. 79 [my translation].
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37 Claude Quétel, History of Syphilis (Baltimore, 1990), pp. 211–215. 38 Turno, “Il malo esempio”, p. 79. Unless otherwise indicated, the following data and quota- tions are from this source. 39 The Presidenza del Buongoverno was created by Pietro Leopoldo in 1784. It controlled the police functions and, after the Restoration, its powers also included the direction of Tuscany prisons, press censorship, and control over foreigners. 40 This is the case of Portoferraio (Island of Elba), where a large garrison was kept. In 1820, the governor of the Island of Elba noted the spread of diseases among those soldiers who had commercial sex with clandestine prostitutes. His main concern, however, was the spread of sex among the men because of their compulsory celibacy and the lack of a proportionate number of meretrici.
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practice, the law in fact distinguished between girls in moral danger (peri- colanti), concubines, and women of ill repute (scostumate), applying to each distinctive and personalized measures and solutions. A paternal and flexible attitude seems to have characterized the relationship between the grand-ducal authorities and some of their weakest subjects. The network of institutions— used both as refuges and as places of internment—played an important role in this regard.41 Yet, thirty years later sources describe what was defined as “gov- ernmental leniency” precisely towards those women known for their “loose behaviour”, not to mention the issue of married prostitutes and libertines.42 At the beginning of the Restoration, in 1814 Florence counted thirty-three official brothels that were generally small and only one or two women were working there. Two years later there were forty-six registered prostitutes but their number decreased throughout the following decades from twenty-two in 1822 to only five in 1846. Following the revolution of 1848, however, a re- verse trend took place. The arrival of Austrian troops in May 1849 was a turn- ing point. A convention signed between Austria and Grand Duke Leopold ii stipulated that ten thousand soldiers were to be kept in Florence and in the Tuscan territories for an indefinite period.43 The presence of a foreign army was certainly a source of unexpected revenue for many but it was also a great concern for the Austrian command. Less than a month later, the military au- thorities filed complaints to the prefect over the spread of venereal diseases among the troops.44 In a few months the number of prostitutes leaped to twenty-one, and they were housed in six brothels. A later survey conducted at the request of the prefecture referred to a further, although not spectacular, increase to thirty- three women in eight brothels. Moreover, an unknown number of unregis- tered prostitutes or women who were suspected of libertinage should also be noted. Pressured by the Austrian command, the grand-ducal authority ordered that stricter watch be kept over suspect women and that medical examina- tions should be carried out according to the circumstances. At the same time,
41 On nineteenth-century Florentine institutions, see Turno, “Il malo esempio”, pp. 54–78. Also, Giovanni Gozzini, Il segreto dell’elemosina: Poveri e carità legale a Firenze, 1800–1870 (Florence, 1993); David Scaffei, “La povertà a Firenze a metà dell’Ottocento. Lavoro, fami- glia, sanità e beneficenza” (Unpublished m.a., University of Florence, 1987). 42 Turno, “Il malo esempio”, p. 85. 43 It was also agreed that while salary and clothing were to be supplied by the Austrian Emperor, the grand ducal treasury should provide accommodation and provisions for the army until 1855. See also Turno, “Postriboli in Firenze”, pp. 233–234, 245. 44 Turno, “Il malo esempio”, p. 88. Unless otherwise indicated, all data and quotations are from this source.
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following the instructions of the Home Minister of August 1849, the Prefect of Florence began to work on a project for the regulation of prostitution that took six years to complete. It is notable that the regulation of prostitution was enacted just a few months before the end of the Austrian occupation. It seems that silent resistance against regulation may have involved anti-Austrian senti- ment and the financial distress caused by the foreign occupiers. On 17 March 1855, the Home Minister finally enacted “Instructions on the Toleration of Public Prostitutes”, acknowledging and reflecting the influence of the “imported” French regulation system. Despite other more repressive sug- gestions, the new measure did not include the compulsory registration of clan- destine prostitutes. Rather, being granted the formal status of prostitute was considered to be a concession given only to those women who made a request and on the basis of certain pre-requisites. They were to be at least 18 years old, not pregnant, free from contagious diseases, and have no criminal record. If they were from the grand duchy, they were to be single or a widow with no children, and their parents or relatives should not be opposed to their partici- pation in prostitution. At the same time, it was permissible to renounce the licence and leave a brothel after giving notice to the police. Former prostitutes, however, were to be kept under control with the aim of preventing clandes- tine prostitution. Compulsory medical examinations and restrictions on these women’s movements characterized the life of registered prostitutes who also had to pay doctor’s fees and the costs of their own hospitalization. They could work (and live) on their own or with other prostitutes in a brothel overseen by a woman older than 40 years of age. Sources indicate that the geographical origins of prostitutes tended to vary from decade to decade. Among the forty-six meretrici registered in 1816, only seven were “foreign” born (15 per cent), while Florentine and Tuscan women represented 45 and 36 per cent, respectively. Foreigners (estere) were consid- ered to be women who came from outside the grand duchy. Most of them were from the Papal States and a few were from Venice and Padua, while none were from southern Italy. Three decades later, in 1846, none were described as being as Florentine and only three were from Siena. Following the Austrian occupa- tion, however, almost 43 per cent of the prostitutes registered in November 1849 were from grand ducal cities and the countryside, 30 per cent were for- eigners, and the remaining 19 per cent were from Florence. In 1851, there was a partial reversal in that trend. The number of foreign prostitutes dropped while women who were Florentine and Tuscan increased to 33 and 45 per cent, re- spectively (Table 4.1). According to the 1849 Note and the 1851 survey, the average age of regis- tered prostitutes was 23. The youngest, ranging between 17 and 20 years old,
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Table 4.1 Origins of Florence’s sex workers, 1816–1851.
1816 1826 1836–1846 1849 1851
Florence 45% - - 19% 33% Grand-Duchy 36% 69.2% 20% 42.8% 45% Foreign 15% 30.8% 80% 30% 22% N 46 13 5 21 33
diminished from 47 to 35 per cent in 1851 after the Restoration, while those in their early and late 20s increased from 47 to 61 per cent. Very few were over the age of 30. The great majority were single, as married women were generally not allowed to be registered. Very little is known about their former occupations, as the available sources provide information only for sixteen prostitutes. It ap- pears, however, that most of them were farm labourers (braccianti), while five had worked as domestic servants. These and other figures would dramatically change after the unification of Italy in 1861.
1861: The Cavour Regulation
In fact, the grand ducal regulations lasted only five years and were swept away by the introduction of the new and more repressive Cavour Regulation. Enacted by an administrative decree in February 1860 and extended to Tuscany two months later, the regulation “adopted a three-pronged strategy of registra- tion, examination, and treatment. A special polizia dei costumi (moral police) were put in charge of the surveillance over the prostitutes, while subordinate uffici sanitarii (health offices) carried out vaginal examinations.”45 Prostitutes could voluntarily request registration, but it could also be done without their consent. In other words, any woman who was known to be or was suspected of being a prostitute was sent for a medical examination and forcibly regis- tered. According to Cavour, morality and public health were thus guaranteed. In reality, “the threat of registration constituted a powerful mechanism of harassment potentially applicable to every lower-class woman.”46 Mistresses, courtesans, and other categories of “high-class” prostitutes were generally ex- cluded from registration. However, abuse and intimidation by the police and
45 Gibson, Prostitution and the State, p. 28. 46 Ibid., p. 148.
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47 Turno, “Il malo esempio”, p. 126. 48 Sources refer to the clandestine phenomenon of minor prostitution. Annarita Buttafuo- co, Le Mariuccine. Storia di una istituzione laica: l’Asilo Mariuccia 1902–1932 (Milan, 1985); Turno, “Il malo esempio”, pp. 131–132. 49 Turno, “Il malo esempio”, p. 217. 50 Gibson, Prostitution and the State, p. 96. 51 Ibid., pp. 17–18.
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Moreover, as mentioned above, the data on prostitutes’ former occupations began to indicate a slight change; according to the same statistics, 30.5 per cent declared that they had worked as domestic servants,52 27.6 per cent had been farm workers, 24 per cent had been garment workers, 8.9 per cent had been mil- liners, and 3.7 per cent had been straw workers. The remaining 4.4 per cent had been unemployed. Domestic service, straw work, and farm work in particular were seasonal and poorly paid, which explains the tendency of women to com- bine part-time occupations, including prostitution.53 Mobility characterized prostitutes’ lives. On the one hand, this was a means of “refreshing” the women in the brothels. On the other hand, it was a way of evading police control and the compulsory bi-weekly medical examinations.54 In other words, mobility can also be seen as a form of resistance: “the easiest way to remove oneself from police lists was secretly to leave one city and set up shop in another.”55 According to the regulation, prostitutes could live in groups in tolerated brothels or work alone (meretrici isolate). Florence had a high number of “special places” (case particolari) where lone prostitutes carried out their work. In 1860, the San Giovanni quarter had sixty-four such lodgings, whereas Santa Maria Novella, Santo Spirito, and Santa Croce had twenty, seventeen, and six- teen, respectively. Ten years later, 100 lone prostitutes legally worked in the San Giovanni quarter. Working alone as a prostitute was highly valued. By working in that way, prostitutes could avoid the intolerable work rhythm imposed in the brothels and, above all, they could enjoy the right to refuse clients. In other words, they could achieve a degree of autonomy that was unheard of in terms of freedom from pimps and, in particular, their clients. It made it possible for such women to have an appearance of normality, develop more complex re- lationships, and increase their chances of finding an “honest” job or someone who would agree to provide them with economic support. Under Article 33 of the regulation, registered prostitutes could move in with citizens who formally agreed to be responsible for their behaviour and were able to support them. Women could thus avoid the compulsory health checks while they were being supported.56
52 On the feminization of domestic service in Florence and the connection with prostitu- tion, see Maria Casalini, Servitù, nobili e borghesi nella Firenze dell’Ottocento (Florence, 1997). 53 Gibson, Prostitution and the State, p. 111. 54 Ibid., pp. 100–101. 55 Ibid., p. 100. 56 Turno, “Il malo esempio”, pp. 119, 146–147.
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As for the past two centuries, very little is known about prostitutes’ clients in terms of their numbers, ages, civil status, and social standing. The sources available vaguely refer to plebeians and boors (plebei and beceri), distinguished gentlemen, Florentine and foreign aristocrats, and soldiers of all ranks. Howev- er, the requests made by aspiring guarantors of registered prostitutes between 1861 and 1888 help shed some light on their clients. They came from all classes and professions, and on average they were 35 years old; most of them were artisans, shopkeepers, domestic servants, and civil servants, and there were also, albeit fewer, wealthy land owners, bookkeepers, shop helpers (garzoni), innkeepers, and nobles. The majority were single but widows with children were common as well.57 An abolitionist campaign against Cavour’s regulation began soon after its implementation.58 This campaign obtained partial success only in 1888 when Prime Minister Francesco Crispi introduced a new set of rules. The most im- portant innovation was the closure of the health offices and the sifilicomi (spe- cial hospitals for the treatment of venereal diseases) and the abolition of the compulsory health check; as a result, “the police could no longer force women [to] undergo vaginal examinations.” Moreover, “only places—[…] in which prostitution is exercised habitually—not persons, were suitable objects of po- lice registration.”59 Treatment of venereal diseases was guaranteed and free for both sexes. Three years later, Home Minister Giovanni Nicotera enacted a third and more restrictive regulation, a compromise between the decrees of Cavour and Crispi. Under this regulation, the registration of prostitutes was still prohibited but madams had to provide the authorities with a list of the women working in their brothels. In this way, the police could keep brothels and lone prostitutes under surveillance and they had the authority to send prostitutes who refused to undergo medical examinations to the hospital. In 1905, some aspects of the Nicotera law were mitigated by a health regulation which stripped the police of the power to carry out sanitary interventions. That regulation remained in place until the Fascist era, when a different approach was adopted.
57 Ibid., pp. 146–149. 58 Early feminists/emancipationists such as Anna Maria Mozzoni, Sara Nathan, and Jessie White Mario played an important role in promoting abolition, which was, and remained, a bourgeois movement. See Gibson, Prostitution and the State, pp. 37–76. 59 Ibid., pp. 53–54.
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The Twentieth Century
Between 1923 and 1940 a set of laws was passed under Mussolini’s dictator- ship with the aim of isolating prostitutes from the “healthy” segment of society, and this was a step backwards towards repressive regulation. As a whole, the new legislation not only re-asserted most of the pre-existing rules, but also introduced surveillance over those women who worked outside the autho- rized brothels.60 All prostitutes, including lone practitioners, were “ordered to carry a special passport with records of their vaginal examinations for venereal diseases.”61 Although prostitution was tolerated, the police could arrest a wom- an who was suspected of having a venereal disease, refused to undergo a medi- cal examination, practised clandestine prostitution, or merely had an “attitude of soliciting”.62 The transmission of venereal diseases “was transformed from a minor offence into a crime against the race.”63 Because they were institution- alised in brothels and trapped for life by criminal and sanitary records, women had few opportunities to stop engaging in prostitution. Victoria De Grazia sug- gests that, in so doing, the fascist regime intended to emphasise women’s bio- logical mission, their motherhood: “Only by segregating illicit sex from public view and by drawing a sharp line between bad women and good ones might the state preserve the site and purpose of legitimate sex, namely, in marriage, at the initiative of the man and for the purpose of procreation.”64 As mentioned in the introductory section of this chapter, the available archival sources do not allow us to provide, at this stage, much information about prostitutes for this time period. The sources reveal very little about these women’s profiles and families; likewise, they do not indicate to what extent prostitution took place in brothels and was carried out alone, nor can we know how widespread clandestine prostitution was. In reply to questions posed by the abolitionist senator Lina Merlin in March of 1949, the Public Se- curity Division of the Ministry of Interior Affairs revealed that, following the abolition of registration in 1888, no details whatsoever could be found. It was suggested that the High Commissioner for Public Health and Hygiene could provide some data, while answers to other queries would have to be obtained
60 Alessia Sorgato, I reati in materia di prostituzione (Padua, 2009), pp. 7–8. 61 Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922–1945 (Berkeley [etc.], 1992), p. 44. 62 Testo unico delle leggi di Pubblica Sicurezza, 18 June 1931, art. 213. 63 Ellen Victoria Nerenberg, Prison Terms: Representing Confinement During and After Italian Fascism (Toronto, 2001), p. 113. 64 De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women, p. 45.
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65 Archivio Centrale di Stato, Rome [hereafter acs], Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, Divisione Polizia, b. 332, 13600, Dati statistici sulla prosti- tuzione, 14 March 1949. According to a later note, 3,929 women held a “sanitary passport”. 66 In his speech against the abolition of regulation, Florentine senator Gaetano Pieraccini provided some more or less reliable information on prostitution in Florence. See Senato della Repubblica, Atti parlamentari, I Legislatura, Discussioni, vol. ix, 16 November 1949, pp. 11,952–11,967. 67 See, for instance, A Tale of Poor Lovers by the Florentine writer Vasco Pratolini. In his nov- el, published in 1947 and set in Florence during the Fascist regime, the author describes police round-ups of prostitutes in the streets each night. 68 See Gian Carlo Fusco, Quando l’Italia tollerava (Rome, 1965); Indro Montanelli, Addio, Wanda! Rapporto Kensey sulla situazione italiana (Milan, 1956). See also Le Case Chiuse, available at: http://www.memoro.org/it/video.php?ID=123; last accessed 2 July 2017. 69 acs, Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, b. 304, 13600.30/6. 70 Cara Senatrice Merlin… Lettere dalle case chiuse (Turin, 2008).
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The letters disclose a world far from the glamorous images later depicted by some of the brothels’ customers who nostalgically remembered them; that world was also a far cry from the atmosphere of lust and perversion that mor- alists and Catholics imagined. Rather, the eloquent and lively accounts of pros- titutes paint a picture that reveals dimly lit interiors, repetitive daily routines, and tense relations with madams. Some of them provide harsh and embittered details about careless clients who “come to us routinely, as if they were barber’s clients”,71 and they indicate that the women had from thirty to thirty five men per day, or more.72 The enquiry carried out by Lina Merlin (cited in her speech to the Senate) estimated that prostitutes had an even higher average number of colloqui (sexual intercourse) per day, but that figure may have been exag- gerated to serve her purposes. The price was 100 to 200 lire for each encounter and the madams kept half of that while prostitutes had to pay for admission, room and board, health checks, and medical treatment, as well as the perfume they used.73 Archival documents shed some light on madams and their brothels and, occasionally, on clandestine prostitution for the time period leading up to 1958 when regulation was abolished. According to a report dated 2 November 1923, Florence had thirty-five tolerated brothels where around 150 women worked under the supervision of the so called tenutarie (madams). Most likely, the madams were former prostitutes and generally middle-aged and unmarried, and more than fifty madams were listed as having been managers of broth- els between the 1920s and 1958. Over 70 per cent of them were from northern Italy, and some of them were from the same village and even from the same family, while 20 per cent were from Florence and the rest from Tuscany.74 The figures might suggest that Florentines themselves were more inclined to run clandestine brothels in order to avoid public notoriety, police restrictions, and tax payments. These women frequently replaced each other as managers of the houses, sometimes in rapid succession. However, they appear regularly as brothel-keepers in the prefecture records, and some of them ran the same casa for over twenty years.75
71 Ibid., p. 94. 72 A letter-writer recalls a “special day” when she received 120 clients, in Ibid., p. 117. 73 Senato della Repubblica, Atti parlamentari, I Legislatura, Discussioni, vol. ix, 12 October 1949, p. 10812. 74 These percentages varied from year to year. In 1923, 38 per cent were Florentine or Tuscan- born madams. In 1927 the number decreased to 33 per cent, falling to 14 per cent by 1957. See acs, Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, b. 304, nn. 1–16. 75 acs, Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, b. 304, nn. 1–16.
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Madams, often referred to as turpi megere (filthy hags),76 were subject to po- lice control in the running of their houses. It was illegal to sell alcohol or drugs on the premises, and entrance was forbidden to minors. Above all, madams were expected to promote and ensure sanitary surveillance over the women working in the case. Their houses could be temporarily or permanently closed down if they didn’t follow the regulations and they could also face trial and im- prisonment. In February of 1941, for instance, the local questura (office of the questore) imposed three days of suspension for a house in via Burrella. It had been reported that poor-quality condoms had been distributed to clients in place of those recommended by the provincial surgeon in conformity with the law on prophylaxis against venereal diseases.77 On the other hand, an anony- mous tip reporting the presence of an underage youth led to the closure of a brothel in via dell’Amorino 4 for fifteen days.78 Brothels could also be closed and reopened purely for economic reasons. A house of prostitution in via Bor- gognona 1 was closed down because its manager went bankrupt in March of 1935, and then it was reopened in January of 1936 in the “interests of the mass of creditors.”79 Following a national trend, the number of registered brothels in Florence decreased over time from thirty-five in 1923 to fourteen in the 1940s. They were mainly concentrated around the S. Croce area, between the central market and the train station, around S. Maria Novella Church and the cathedral, and not far from the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge). Only two brothels operated on the other side of the Arno River (Oltrarno). After having been closed down by the Allies just after the liberation of the city in August 1944, the surviving fourteen brothels were reopened three months later as a means of containing the pro- liferation of clandestine prostitution in hotels and private houses and stopping the spread of venereal diseases. According to a report issued by the prefecture of Florence on 18 November 1944, the questura together with the Allied Mili- tary Police arrested 569 prostitutes over a period of two weeks.80 The number of tolerated brothels remained constant for another decade until their closure.
76 Senato della Repubblica, Atti parlamentari, I Legislatura, Discussioni, vol. ix, 12 October 1949, p. 10809 (Discorso al Senato). 77 acs, Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, b. 304, 13600.30/7, Locale di meretricio in via della Burella 8. Profilassi delle malattie veneree, 27 February 1941, xix. 78 Ibid., b. 304, 13600.30/3, 13 September 1939, Locale di meretricio in via dell’Amorino 4. 79 Ibid., b. 304, 13600.30/6, Locale di meretricio in via Borgognona 1. 80 Ibid., b. 338, n. 13631/A, Firenze—Prostituzione clandestina—Misure di vigilanza e repres- sione—Relazione quindicinale, Reale Prefettura di Firenze, 18 November 1944. On the
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Regulation was repealed in 1958 when, after ten years of debates, Parlia- ment approved the Merlin law. The new measure abolished the regulation of prostitution and forbade the running of brothels, whether state-run or private. It also obviated the requirement for the registration and recording of women working as prostitutes, and abolished compulsory medical examinations and treatment. It also prohibited trafficking and the exploitation of women as well as all forms of aiding and abetting. Under the law, street prostitution was legal and women could engage in prostitution at their own homes. The Merlin law was expected to be a milestone for civil rights, as female prostitutes could, un- der the terms of the law, enjoy freedoms never known before. Reality, however, fell far short of expectations. The law was a compromise between libertarian and repressive intentions, as some of its articles increased the discretionary powers of the authorities to excessive and dangerous levels.81 Although selling sex was not illegal, it was bounded by a network of prohibitions that heavily re- stricted prostitutes’ rights to the point that, for all appearances, it was an illicit activity. The law is still in effect, although several attempts have been made over time to reform or abrogate it. Some media outlets periodically supported parliamentarians who launched campaigns against street prostitution, which was considered to be the most visible consequence and legacy of the closure of brothels.82 Street prostitution, however, was not a novelty but it did become more con- spicuous starting in the late 1950s. At the same time, brothels did not disappear; police investigations led (and still lead) from time to time to the discovery of clandestine houses.83 What is new is the increasing visibility of potential clients and simple onlookers who have started cruising in their cars looking
question of prostitution in Italy in the aftermath of liberation, see Isobell Williams, Allies and Italians under Occupation: Sicily and Southern Italy, 1943–1945 (New York, 2013). 81 In reality the law had lost track of its original aim. According to Lina Merlin’s original view, for instance, both prostitutes and clients would be involved in the safeguarding of public hygiene without compromising personal freedom. See Tamar Pitch, Limited Re- sponsibilities: Social Movements and Criminal Justice (London [etc.], 1995). 82 Given the invisible and relatively comfortable status accorded to clients by the law, not all proposals had a long life. The suggestion to fine both clients and prostitutes began to raise some interest, especially among the most conservative and populist politicians only in the late 1990s. See Daniela Danna, “Italy: The Never-ending Debate”, in Joyce Outhshoorn (ed.), The Politics of Prostitution: Women’s Movements, Democratic States and the Global- ization of Commercial Sex (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 165–184. 83 See, for instance, “Bella indossatrice processata per le ‘case squillo’ di Firenze”, La Stampa, 24 March 1965, p. 15; “Direttore di periodico arrestato per lenocinio”, La Stampa, 8 Novem- ber 1973, p. 20.
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84 “ The puttan tour” is a common term referring to cruising around looking for prostitutes without actually being interested in buying sex. See Carla Corso and Sandra Landi, Quan- to vuoi? Clienti e prostitute si raccontano (Florence, 1998), pp. 107–108. 85 In his novel dating from 1963, La costanza della ragione, Florentine writer Vasco Pratolini refers to the Cascine Park as a zone where both male and female prostitutes and their clients could meet. Raffaele Palumbo claims that the Cascine is the place of the sex trade “par excellence” in Florence, where “voluntary, coerced, Italian, foreign, child, and drug- addict prostitution can be found all together” [my translation], in Palumbo, La tua città sulla strada, p. 19. Unless otherwise indicated, the following information come from this source. 86 See also Francesco Matteini, “Le Cascine monumento nazionale”, La Stampa, 26 July 1986, p. 9; Piero Taddei, “Quando il parco diventa una bolgia d’inferno”, Cronaca Vera, 3 August 1988, n. 830, pp. 36–37. 87 “It is common opinion among journalists, Italian prostitutes, the magistracy and police detectives that the organization of prostitution in Florence, as well as in other Italian cit- ies, is run by Albanian groups not connected to each other” [my translation], in Palumbo, La tua città sulla strada, p. 20.
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88 See also Ministero dell’Interno, 2010. Osservatorio sulla prostituzione e sui fenomeni delit- tuosi ad essa connessi Relazione sulle attività svolte, 1° semetre 2007, available at: http:// www.osservatoriopedofilia.gov.it/dpo/resources/cms/documents/141.Osservatorio_pros- tituzione.pdf; last accessed 2 July 2017. 89 Gruppo Abele, Annuario sociale 2000: Cronache dei fatti, dati, ricerche, statistiche, leggi, nomi, cifre (Milan, 2000), p. 575; Palumbo, La tua città sulla strada, pp. 59–60. 90 Palumbo, La tua città sulla strada, pp. 51–53. 91 Comune di Firenze, “Prostituzione: Assessore Lastri, non possiamo ridurlo ad un fenomeno di Ordine pubblico”, 26 June 2001, available at: http://press.comune.fi.it/ hcm/hcm5353-7_7_24051-Prostituzione%3A+assessore+Lastri,+non+possiamo+ridu .html?cm_id_details=30305&id_padre=5080; last accessed 2 July 2017.
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92 Franca Selvatici, “Ragazzini in vendita alle Cascine, indaga la questura”, La Repubblica, 28 September 2007, available at: http://Firenze.repubblica.it/dettaglio/ragazzini-in-vendita -alle-cascine-la-procura-indaga/1372588; last accessed 3 July 2017. 93 Cambini Tosi Sabrina (ed.), Prostituzione e comunità locale: percezione del fenomeno, vi- vibilità urbana, mediazione di conflitti, sperimentazioni sul territorio: Rapporto (Florence, 2006), available at: http://www.coopcat.org/cultura/ricerche/; last accessed 28 June 2017. 94 Valentina Cipriani and Elena Micheloni, “…non ti vedo”: La città di Prato e la prostituzione sommersa (Prato, 2010), available at: http://www.provincia.prato.it/w2d3/internet/down- load/provprato/intranet/utenti/domini/risorse/documenti/store--20120613124101429/ LE+TELE+PROSTITUZIONE+L.pdf; last accessed 28 June 2017. 95 Ifeanyi O. Onyeonoru, “Pull Factors in the Political Economy of International Commercial Sex Work in Nigeria”, African Sociological Review, 8 (2004), pp. 115–135, 118.
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96 Cipriani and Micheloni, “…non ti vedo”: La città di Prato e la prostituzione sommersa, p. 18. 97 In May 2013, police discovered that two Florentine luxury hotels were meeting places for high-class escorts (mainly from eastern Europe) and their clients. In this case, the en- counters were organized through a specialised web page and a number of escort agen- cies. See (Anon.), “Firenze, festini a luci rosse in hotel: Clienti vip, quattordici indagati”, La Nazione, 16 May 2013, available at: http://www.lanazione.it/cronaca/2013/05/16/889426 -festini-luci-rosse-hotel-clienti-vip.shtml; last accessed 28 June 2017. 98 Cambini Tosi, Prostituzione e comunità locale, p. 16. 99 Andrea Cagioni (ed.), Sintesi della ricerca sulla prostituzione indoor e sull’assoggettamento para-servile nel territorio della regione Toscana, settembre 2009–giugno 2010: La vulnerabil- ità invisibile (Florence, 2010), available at: http://www.coopcat.org/cultura/ricerche/; last accessed 28 June 2017; see also Cipriani and Micheloni, “…non ti vedo”, La città di Prato e la prostituzione sommersa, pp. 21–22.
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Conclusion
This paper has illustrated some aspects of the sex trade in Florence and some of the changes that have taken place in the city during the period taken into consideration. The lack of information regarding prostitutes’ clients is notable for these time periods, which is hardly surprising. Clients simply disappear from police records, media accounts, and sociological studies, as the stigma and criminalization has usually been heaped on prostitutes. By virtue of a tacit agreement, clients’ presence has been merely taken for granted and rarely in- vestigated. Only very recently have Italian researchers turned their attention to the buyers of sexual services, in particular as regards the demand for trafficked women.100 At the same time, the legal framework has limited, or even blocked, an exhaustive exploration of questions related to the social profiles of female (and male) prostitutes and their families, the mediation of sex work, and the working conditions of prostitutes. On the other hand, both the legislative approach and the demographics of prostitution have undergone several transformations, in particular since Ital- ian unification in 1861. The introduction of the regulation of prostitution was a dramatic turning point for Italian women in the sex industry regardless of their standard of living. Its abrogation in 1958 was a milestone for women’s rights. The closure of the brothels, however, brought about as a consequence a drastic increase in street prostitution, which is now a feature of the Florentine urban scene both day and night. Nonetheless, illegal indoor sex work is believed to be increasing, and it is carried out in hotels and rented apartments. Both indoor and outdoor prostitution have spread well beyond the city centre and the Cas- cine Park towards the periphery and other areas. The geographical composition of Florentine prostitution and the gender of the individuals engaged in sex work have greatly changed in the last forty years. By the early 1970s, male and transvestite prostitutes had taken on an in- creasingly stable and visible presence in the city followed later on by West Afri- can women and South American transsexuals. After the fall of the communist regimes, women from eastern and central Europe started to work the streets,
100 See, for instance, Maria Serena Natale and Silvia Turin, “Prostituzione, sono tre milioni gli uomini che pagano”, Corriere della sera, 4 March 2016, available at http://www.corriere .it/cronache/sesso-e-amore/notizie/sesso-a-pagamento-inchiesta-27ma-956b45a6 -e13b-11e5-86bb-b40835b4a5ca.shtml; last accessed 28 June 2017; Di Nicola et al. (eds), Prostitution and Human Trafficking: Focus on Clients (New York, 2009). See also Corso and Landi, Quanto vuoi?, pp. 61–209; Luisa Leonini and Sonia Bella, Sesso in acquisto: Una ricerca sui clienti della prostituzione (Milano, 1999).
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101 In 1998, the Italian parliament passed an article that makes it possible to grant a “pro- tection permit” which allows people to stay in the country if they are determined to be victims of traffickers. See Danna, “Italy: The Never-ending Debate”, pp. 165–184, 168. 102 Ministero dell’Interno, Osservatorio sulla prostituzione (2010), p. 11 [my translation].
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