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| Red Light District |
Amsterdam’s prostitutes have operated for some 700 years in this same neighborhood, the harbor district. The prostitution district has always been near the entrance to the city: Amsterdam was most easily reached by ship, and the Central Station was built in 1889 on an artificial island in the harbor, which made it accessible to sailors and travelers.
The first documentation of prostitution in Amsterdam dates from the 13th century, when Amsterdam was only a small fishing town. During the later Middle Ages, the trade was allowed but restricted to certain side streets. Married men and priests were forbidden to enter the police- supervised brothels. This regulated tolerance was similar to that in other European towns at the times and in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church, that prostitution was, this side of Paradise, a necessary evil. Prostitutes were seen as sinners who could be saved: as elsewhere, a Magdalene nunnery was instituted for repentant prostitutes.
The Reformation did not look kindly on the toleration of prostitution. The new Christian interpretation of policing morality was not of the forgiving of sins, but of the punishments of moral offenses as crimes. It was deeply and widely feared that God would punish society for sins committed and permitted. Amsterdam’s licensed brothels were closed down in 1578 during the revolt against the city’s overlord, the King of Spain, when the city joined the Protestant rebels. The Protestants won; henceforth, any sexual immorality was defined and persecuted as a crime. Until about 1800, some 20 percent of all formal judicial activity was directed toward the suppression of the sex trade.
With more than 200,000 inhabitants, in the 17th century Amsterdam was the third largest city in Europe, after London and Paris. It had grown into a center of traffic and trade and, above all, an important port, where every year thousands of sailors were recruited and discharged, creating a large demand for venal sex. On the supply side, there was a huge surplus of women among the lower classes, mostly poor immigrants who had little chance of finding a husband. Prostitution thrived, especially from 1670 on, when street lighting was installed and nightlife boomed. Travel guides and semipornographic descriptions of the city’s attractions such as 'Het Amsterdamsch Hoerdom' (1681) exploited and magnified the city’s growing reputation for sexual vice. Amsterdam’s reputation as a center of prostitution from the last decades of the 17th to the beginning of the 19th century was comparable with today’s. Visitors to the city invariably paid a visit to a speelhuis or musico, ostensibly a tavern where music was played and one could eat, drink, and dance, but in reality a place where prostitutes picked up customers and customers prostitutes. Most tourists also visited the Spinhuis, the female prison, where one, for a small entrance fee, could gape at convicted prostitutes.
Many believed that prostitution in Amsterdam, although forbidden, was in effect tolerated as a necessary evil. Bernard Mandeville, born a Dutchman, wrote in his 'Fable of the Bees' (1714–29),
"Where six or seven Thousand Sailors arrive at once, as it often happens at Amsterdam, that have seen none but their own Sex for many Months together, how is it to be suppos’d that honest Women should walk the Streets unmolested, if there were no Harlots to be had at reasonable Prices? For which Reason the Wise Rulers of that well-order’d City always tolerate an uncertain number of Houses, in which Women are hired as publickly as Horses at a Livery-Stable; there being in this Toleration a great deal of Prudence and Oeconomy.
However, at no time was prostitution in Amsterdam simply tolerated. With the help of a relatively small police force, many formal and informal methods of fighting and controlling prostitution were used, from “harassing” brothels and confiscating capital, to raids of prostitutes, prison sentences, and exposure on the scaffold. The police, moreover, forced the prostitution business into self-regulation, by following up on what was unacceptable, for example, having young girls as prostitutes or causing disturbances in the neighborhood. At that time, prostitution was mostly to be found in small brothels, with a madam as its head.
The end of the Dutch Republic in 1795 meant a restructuring of the entire legal and moral system. Amsterdam’s legislators, physicians, and authorities joined the international debate on prostitution as necessary for curbing male sexual lust, and on the advisability of bringing prostitutes under medical control to prevent the spread of syphilis. From 1810–13, when the Netherlands were annexed by Napoleon, the French introduced such a system to regulate prostitution in Amsterdam.
In the Code Pénal of 1811, which remained valid after the French occupation, prostitution was no longer defined as a crime; only the seduction or enforcement of minors into prostitution was penalized. The central government of the by-now Kingdom of the Netherlands urged the cities to reintroduce medical control of prostitutes. Amsterdam officially refused to comply, but in reality it used an unofficial system of medical control and licensing of prostitutes. The city, which after more than a century of stagnation was growing fast, was more than ever the center of prostitution in the country. Most of it was still to be found near the harbor, from “French” women in large luxury brothels, to dancers and barmaids in the many places of entertainment, to poor immigrant German girls in lower-class brothels.
As elsewhere, the toleration of prostitution and the forced medical control of prostitutes became one of the key political issues of the last decades of the 19th century. In city after city, the regulations licensing brothels were withdrawn; in Amsterdam all brothels were forcibly closed in 1897. Statute laws were only changed in 1911, when a comprehensive morals bill was passed. Prostitution as such was not criminalized, but organizing and profiteering from prostitution were penalized. Brothels were forbidden and largely disappeared from the public eye, but plenty of prostitutes could still be found as waitresses, hostesses, and singers in bars and cafés, as “masseuses” in massage parlors, as “shop assistants” in tobacco shops or art galleries.
Gradually the prostitution came into the open again, and, in the 1930s, the first women who sat visibly behind large windows appeared. The introduction of electricity made red lights possible, and some 40 years later, adequate heating and the sexual revolution made the prostitutes drop most of their clothes. These women worked on their own, paying rent to or sharing profits with the landlords, but many shared their earnings with others. Crime also had its home in the red light district, but on the whole, the neighborhood was under control. There was a modus vivendi with the neighbors and a balancing act with the police and the vice squad. Most prostitutes were from the Netherlands, and among the clients sailors were still prominent, as they had been for centuries. Penicillin had suppressed venereal diseases.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, it was believed and expected that the sexual revolution would put an end to, or at least greatly diminish, prostitution. Instead, the sexual revolution legitimized and boosted the sex business, and the media willingly catered to the semipornographic attraction of prostitution. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s had a greater impact in the Netherlands than anywhere else. In Amsterdam’s red light district, not only prostitution, but also sex clubs and pornography shops proliferated. Soft drugs came to be openly and visibly tolerated. The media portrayed prostitution positively. In 1984, a prostitutes’ union was founded, the Rode Draad (“Red Thread”), subsidized since 1987. The 'De Graafstichting', a state-funded research institute for the study of prostitution, actively promoted the acceptance of sex work.
The prohibition of brothels of 1911 had long been deemed obsolete, and since 1987, committees discussed and drafted a new prostitution law. This law was finally introduced in 1999. Prostitution was officially and openly stated to be a normal occupation for the first time, and prostitutes were to have a right to all social and medical benefits enjoyed by employees of other legal businesses. However, prostitutes now have to register, possess an official work permit, and pay taxes. The law also authorizes local authorities to make detailed bylaws and so regulate prostitution at a local level.
The legalization, discussed in a time of liberal sentiments, has turned out to be the opposite of a “liberalization” of prostitution. In the 1980s, the atmosphere in the red light district changed with the introduction of hard drugs; later, international organized crime threatened to take over the district. The police recovered the red light district to some extent, but drug addiction among prostitutes and traffic of women still are unsolved problems. Confronted with the dark side of prostitution, Amsterdam used the legalization to tighten the control of the sex trade. First, the city anticipated the new law by introducing in 1996 a local bylaw requiring all entrepreneurs in the business to apply for a license. The applicants must not have a criminal record, the premises have to meet strict safety and health regulations, and the women employed must have a work permit. Prostitution is restricted to the red light district and a few (also traditional) streets in other parts of the town. Streetwalking was only allowed on one location, the Theemsweg, away from the center, where there were facilities and supervision provided.
The result is that there is now much less visible, open prostitution in Amsterdam. In spite of possible benefits, women with a work permit have so far declined to come into the open and proclaim themselves prostitutes and pay taxes. Prostitutes from outside the European Union cannot work legally in prostitution. Many of the windows of the red light district are currently empty. In 2003, after continuing problems with addicted and illegal women, the Theemsweg was closed, and streetwalkers are not allowed anywhere in Amsterdam. The object of the legalization, to recognize prostitution as a normal profession, and so decriminalize it, has not been fulfilled. Prostitutes have transferred their activities to other cities, but it is feared that most prostitutes working illegally, from Eastern Europe, Asia, South America, and some African countries, have been driven underground and further into the clutches of criminals. Times have changed. The Rode Draad will shortly lose what is left of its subsidy, and the 'De Graafstichting' has been closed since January 1, 2005.
By L.C. van de Pol in "Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work", Greenwood Press, USA,2006,edited by Melissa Hope Ditmore, excerpts v. 1, pp. 26-29. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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