In 1778, a decree was issued in France ordering that women of easy virtue be arrested and have their heads shaved
In December 1945, Marthe Richard, a councilwoman of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, managed to push through a law banning brothels in the Paris region, and then, with the active support of the Minister of Health and the press, forced parliament to adopt the same law at the national level. The law was passed on April 13, 1946, and in November, when it came into force, about 1,400 brothels were closed across the country, of which only 195 were in Paris. Thus ended the centuries-old history of legal French brothels.
The first brothels appeared in France as early as the time of the Roman conquest. The first to attempt to ban brothels and prostitution altogether in France was Louis IX (Saint Louis). In December 1254, returning from the Seventh Crusade, the king issued an ordinance punishing both prostitution and pimping. However, just two years later, the king changed his mind and issued another ordinance, according to which prostitution was not prohibited but regulated. "Prostitutes" were required to live outside the city walls and away from holy places, churches, and cemeteries.
However, the regulation of prostitution in France existed even before Saint Louis. First, prostitutes had their freedom of movement and choice of residence restricted. Second, they were required to work on certain days and hours (for example, they could not engage in it on Sundays or on religious holidays). Third, "prostitutes" had to wear clothing that distinguished them from "respectable" women. And, of course, the authorities tried to control the "industry" through repressive bodies. Philip Augustus created in 1189 a squad that controlled the work of Parisian prostitutes.
The significance of prostitution in the life of the city already in the Middle Ages is evidenced even by the medieval toponymy of Paris: there was a street called Rue Baille-Hoë (Give Joy Street), which is now Rue de Talleyrand, a street called Rue Pute-y-musse (Where Whores Lurk), and so on. And prostitutes, although forced to submit to certain restrictions, were not considered excluded from society. In Chartres Cathedral, a stained glass window donated by prostitutes, "The Parable of the Prodigal Son," is still preserved.
Incidentally, the clergy themselves were the main holders of brothels in the Middle Ages. And even Saint Louis in 1269 went so far as to personally finance this "branch of the national economy." Setting off on the Eighth Crusade, the king hired a team of 13,000 women of easy virtue to serve his knights. The prostitutes followed the army throughout the holy campaign to Tunisia.
As it happened, the campaign ended in failure and became the last large-scale crusade. Saint Louis himself did not return from the campaign. However, the prostitutes had nothing to do with these misfortunes.
In the 16th century, France once again began to seriously fight prostitution. According to historians, there were two reasons: first, the spread of syphilis; second, the tightening of Catholic morality in response to the Reformation movement. In 1561, under Catherine de Medici, the Orléans Ordinance was adopted, which, among other things, seriously tightened the regulation of prostitution, banned brothels, and increased punishments for violations of the new strict rules.
However, as always, workers of the world's oldest profession, as well as their guardians, found ways to carefully circumvent the law. As a result, the strict rules were observed very irregularly, and many of them de facto existed only on paper.
In 1658, the twenty-year-old Louis XIV, the Sun King, ordered the creation of a "correctional institution" for "immoral women" at the Parisian hospital of Salpêtrière. Thirty years later, in 1687, the Sun King ordered that the nose and ears be cut off every prostitute found within 2 leagues of Versailles. According to historians, this punishment was applied "only five times." In 1778, a decree was issued in France ordering that women of easy virtue be arrested and have their heads shaved.
After the death of the Sun King, there came the regency of Philip of Orléans, nicknamed the "Duke of Love," and then power passed to the no less frivolous Louis XV, under whom brothels were again legalized.
Well, the accession to power of the unfortunate King Louis XVI was marked not only by another ban on prostitution in the country, but also by the French Revolution. However, it would also be a mistake to consider these two events interconnected. The revolution occurred due to a completely different kind of hunger.
There could be no hunger for carnal pleasures among the people if only because, despite all prohibitions, at the end of the 18th century, according to historian Charles-Jérôme Lecour, there were 30 thousand "common" prostitutes and another 10 thousand "elite" ones in Paris alone, accounting for 13% of the city's female population.
After the revolution, the Directory again tried to fight prostitution, but very soon, with the rise of Napoleon, an order was established that remained almost unchanged until 1946. On October 12, 1804, by order of Napoleon, the Paris police prefect Dubois ordered the organization of so-called "houses of pleasure." The houses themselves and the "girls" working in them came under the control of a special police unit – the Vice Squad. Before entering service in a "house of pleasure," a girl had to register at the prefecture. In addition, a monthly medical examination was mandatory – although this rule was far from always enforced.
But overall, the system of state-controlled brothels worked more or less reliably and brought in decent revenue. The "girls" both worked and lived in the brothels, which is why they were commonly called maisons closes (i.e., "closed houses"). Thus, prostitutes were effectively in semi-isolation, which fully suited "respectable members of society," who, on the one hand, recognized a man's "legal right" to "relax" with a prostitute "for the sake of his health," and on the other hand, considered "prostitutes" pariahs, notes historian Yannick Ripa, a professor at Paris VIII University.
During the Third Republic (from 1870), the "golden age" of French brothels began, and the state taxed the brothels at 50-60 percent of income. This led, first, to the number of illegal sex workers, according to writer and journalist Maxime Du Camp, becoming five times greater than the number of registered prostitutes, and second, it prompted those who wanted to "work" officially to create brothels of the "highest level."
Artists were hired for interior design, huge sums were spent on renovations, and the "girls" were carefully selected. The "closed house" "Le Chabanais," operating on the street of the same name near the Palais Royal, became a laureate of the 1900 World's Fair, receiving an award for the design of its "Japanese room." At the 1889 World's Fair, on its opening day, the brothel hosted ministers and ambassadors from around the world. A cartoon by the future English king Edward VII is known, in which he depicted his favorite girls from "Le Chabanais." A special bathtub for bathing in champagne was made for the king by his order. This same brothel was frequented by Maupassant, Marlene Dietrich, and Remarque...
There were consistently about a dozen such luxury "houses" in Paris in the first half of the 20th century. In addition, more than a hundred official but simpler houses operated in the city. Paris also became the world capital of forbidden pleasures, and other countries adopted the French model of organizing prostitution.
Underground prostitution in Paris was also not subjected to serious repression – this can be judged at least by the fact that in 1881 the authorities decided to disband the scandal-ridden "morality police." It would be reestablished only twenty years later.
In 1926, the abolitionist movement, which had originated in England half a century earlier and aimed at a complete ban on prostitution, reached France. Twenty years later, it all ended with the complete closure of legal brothels in the country. However, the main reason for dismantling the established system was that during the war, French brothels actively served the occupiers. It was this circumstance that Marthe Richard made the main argument in her fight for the passage of the law.
Moreover, with the arrival of the American liberating soldiers, who, according to American historian Mary Louise Roberts, "saw possessing French women as payment for the dangers they had faced," real chaos began in this area. The country was hit by an epidemic of venereal diseases, and also, because "Americans saw almost every French woman as a prostitute," it often ended tragically (in 1944-45, the American military tribunal handed down 151 death sentences for rape).
In the end, all this led to the adoption of the "Marthe Richard Law."
They say that French police officers, who after the law's passage had to undertake the thankless task of closing hundreds of brothels, gleefully recalled Madame Richard's heroic past. In her youth, she worked as a prostitute and was known to the police under her maiden name, Bettenfeld. She used it until she met a wealthy commission agent from the Paris market Les Halles. After that, Madame Richard asked to have her name removed from the national register of prostitutes, but she was refused.
During World War I, as she herself said, she worked for French intelligence. In 1926, she married the manager of the Rockefeller Foundation and soon became a "merry widow." She was the mistress of Prime Minister Herriot. In the summer of 1944, when the liberation of France was underway, she supposedly joined the Resistance movement. This, however, is also not reliably proven. But it is known that after the adoption of the "Marthe Richard Law," the old French prostitution registry was destroyed.
As for prostitution itself, it has not disappeared. An article in Le Figaro dedicated to the anniversary of the official closure of French brothels was headlined "70 Years After the Marthe Richard Law: A Dreadful Result." The Marthe Richard Law was adopted to destroy the very institution of pimping. Today it is clear that this was not achieved.
And whether anyone has benefited from prostitution going underground in France is a big question. In neighboring Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, brothels are allowed. They followed the old French example.