chapter 3 Selling Sex in a Provincial Town: Prostitution in Bruges Maja Mechant Introduction At first glance, Bruges—a provincial town in Belgium—and prostitution may appear to be worlds apart. With its mediaeval and mediaeval-esque buildings, cobblestone streets, and canals, Bruges is known as a picture-perfect tour- ist destination. Its charms attract people from all over the world, but unlike in Amsterdam, the must-sees in Bruges do not include the red-light district. Moreover, visitors who are not deliberately on the lookout for prostitutes are unlikely to have spotted a single one in the last decade because commercial sex is simply not part of the scenery.1 Of course, that is not to say that the sex trade is non-existent or that it has always been as small-scale and inconspicuous as it is now. As is the case elsewhere, prostitution evolved in tandem with the city’s size and economy, and at the end of the Middle Ages, Bruges was one of Europe’s largest, most thriving urban centres, and commercial sex was readily available.2 However, unlike most of the cities discussed in this volume, Bruges’ past is not characterized by progressive growth, urbanization, or industrializa- tion, or by a concomitant increase in its prostitution sector. Rather, contem- porary Bruges is a small provincial town, and as such it is an interesting case study because it affords us the opportunity to see how prostitution evolved in a languishing urban centre during the early modern and modern eras. There is less literature on the sex trade in Bruges than there is for larger cities. Only one monograph has been published on the subject to date, namely * I am grateful to Thomas Donald Jacobs for reading this paper, improving it, and giving advice 1 2 regarding my use of English, which was truly a great help. I am also grateful to the editors of this volume for their comments on an earlier version of this article. 1 Despite the nuanced differences between “prostitute” and “sex worker”, I have occasionally used them synonymously in this chapter because of linguistic variations. 2 Guy Dupont, Maagdenverleidsters, hoeren en speculanten: Prostitutie in Brugge tijdens de Bourgondische periode (1385–1515) (Bruges, 1996), pp. 161–162. © Maja Mechant, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004346253_004 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.Maja Mechant - 9789004346253 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 07:33:16AM via free access Selling Sex in a Provincial Town: Prostitution in Bruges 61 Guy Dupont’s work regarding prostitution during the Burgundian period ( 1385–1515).3 The aim here, however, is to provide a long-term overview of the seventeenth century and onwards. In doing so, I will rely on unpublished re- search and data collected by myself, masters students, and Pasop, a non-profit organization that works with prostitutes in the region.4 The availability of in- formation means that my emphasis here is on the evolution that took place between the second half of the eighteenth century, the second half of the nine- teenth century, both World Wars, and the present day. Under discussion are the push and pull factors involved in the trade, the legal norms concerning prosti- tution, the social profiles of sex workers, their dependency on their employers, and their working conditions. Not all of these topics are analysed in depth for all the periods covered due to the limitations of the primary source material, which include normative sources, registration lists, police and court records, interviews, and social statistics. Each type of source has particular advantages and disadvantages, but discussing these in detail here would take us too far from the matter at hand. What is important to keep in mind is that the availability of a specific source largely depends on the legal framework of the era. However, before examining the legislation, I will first outline the context, as well as the factors that have influenced the supply and demand of commercial sex. The Bruges Context As mentioned in the introduction, while prostitution was widespread in Bruges at the end of the Middle Ages, the situation has since greatly altered. Two peri- ods proved decisive in bringing about this change. The first came at the end of 3 4 3 Ibid. 4 Maja Mechant, “Vrouwen met een uitzonderlijke overlevingsstrategie? De levenslopen van prostituees in Brugge (1750–1790)” (ongoing doctoral research, Ghent University); Israel Mertens, “Prostitutie in Vlaanderen: een sociografische en kwantitatieve studie van het pros- titutioneel kader. Brugge en Gent, 19e/begin 20e eeuw” (Unpublished m.a., Ghent University, 1981); Bernard Schotte, “Bestrijding van quat gedragh te Brugge in de 18de eeuw (1724–1774)” (Unpublished m.a., Ghent University, 1982); Vania Vande Voorde, “Prostitutie te Brugge ti- jdens de Eerste en de Tweede Wereldoorlog” (Unpublished m.a., Ghent University, 2007). Pasop, established in 1990, provides medical and social services to sex workers in the Belgian provinces of East and West Flanders. I am very grateful to Martine Claeyssens for allowing me to look at Pasop’s annual reports and for putting together tables pertaining to Bruges. I am equally indebted to Ans Traen, a doctor, and An Mortier, a nurse, for their willingness to share their knowledge and experiences when I interviewed them in Ghent on 12 June 2012. Maja Mechant - 9789004346253 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 07:33:16AM via free access <UN> 62 Mechant Bruges’ “golden age” in the fifteenth century, when the city’s primary economic sectors, textile production and international commerce, dwindled, as did the numbers of businessmen and sailors. The population decreased from 42,000 inhabitants in 1477 to 29,000 just one hundred years later,5 and the sex trade shrank to meet the needs of the remaining locals as well as soldiers, merchants, and sailors. The second turning point came during the second half of the twen- tieth century when Bruges finally overcame its stagnation and increasingly was profiled as a tourist destination. Moreover, the development of Zeebrugge as a major European port shifted the focal point of the city’s economic life away from Bruges proper.6 This reorganization, along with the city’s new image as an affluent and wholesome tourist destination, led the sex workers who had been present in the heart of Bruges for centuries to relocate outside its mediaeval walls to the roadways around the town. However, this is merely the long-term evolution, and a simplified picture of it at that. The era between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries was not a single uninterrupted run of financial desolation. Bruges did experience eco- nomic upswings, particularly during the region’s peaceful interludes, and it would be imprudent to use the city’s golden age as the yardstick for prosperity. For example, periodic improvements to the port and waterways brought re- peated cycles of growth to the trade sector. When Ghent was reconnected with the sea around 1750, the canal shipping trade in Bruges thrived yet again.7 In fact, the end of the seventeenth century and the second half of the eighteenth century proved exceptions to the city’s long-term economic stagnation. Tex- tile production, although it had been in a state of crisis since the seventeenth century, remained important until it failed to industrialize in the nineteenth century. At that time it completely collapsed, resulting in the most sombre chapter of Bruges’ history. Abject poverty became widespread, and the crop failures of the 1840s worsened an already dire situation.8 Bruges was known as the poorest city in nineteenth-century Flanders, and while this portrayal has 5 6 7 8 5 Heidi Deneweth, “Brugge, een veilige enclave in het krijgsgewoel”, in Valentin Vermeersch (ed.), Brugge (Antwerp, 2002), pp. 100–107, 105. 6 Romain Van Eeno, “Een onomkeerbare evolutie”, in Vermeersch, Brugge, pp. 142–155. 7 Ludo Vandamme and Jan D’hondt, “17de en 18de eeuw: Op zoek naar een nieuwe bestem- ming”, in Marc Ryckaert, André Vandewalle, and Jan D’hondt (eds), Brugge, de geschiedenis van een Europese stad (Tielt, 1999), pp. 141–165, 144–151; Heidi Deneweth, “Brugge, een veilige enclave in het krijgsgewoel”, pp. 100–107; Heidi Deneweth, “De twee gezichten van Brugge”, in Vermeersch, Brugge, pp. 108–123. 8 Romain Van Eeno, “De confrontatie met een gewijzigde wereld”, in Vermeersch, Brugge, pp. 124–131, 129; Romain Van Eeno, “Een politieke machtsverschuiving”, in Vermeersch, Brugge, Maja Mechant - 9789004346253 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 07:33:16AM via free access <UN> Selling Sex in a Provincial Town: Prostitution in Bruges 63 been somewhat altered in the current historiography, there is no doubt that the city was extremely impoverished.9 As the analysis of prostitutes’ wages below will make clear, these economic changes had an obvious impact on the demand and supply aspects of commer- cial sex, but until recently there was always a sizable call for such services in the city itself. Today’s clients are more mobile and tend to seek their sexual gratifi- cation further away, but in the past the prostitution sector catered to both the local townsmen and the surrounding rural population. Their customer base was varied, consisting of youngsters, married men, and the clergy as well, the latter being a fairly large group in Bruges. The presence of itinerates such as sailors, traveling merchants, and military troops caused the supply to exceed local demand, and the latter group in particular fuelled the trade. Bruges be- came a garrison town in the seventeenth century, and soldiers of all ranks show up as clients in the source materials well into the twentieth century.