Medieval Sex Work & Brothels

Summary

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Gone Medieval - "Medieval Sex Work & Brothels"

Host: Dr. Eleanor Janega
Guest: Dr. Kate Lister
Date: August 4, 2026

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Episode Overview

This lively and irreverent episode of Gone Medieval dives deep into the lesser-told yet crucial history of sex work and brothels in medieval Europe. Host Dr. Eleanor Janega sits down with historian and author Dr. Kate Lister to explore how sex work intersected with economics, theology, gender, law, and everyday urban life in the theoretical “holy” world of medieval Christendom. The conversation is frank, humorous, and insightful, examining persistent hypocrisies, the cyclical nature of regulation and stigma, and surprising stories of survival and community among medieval sex workers.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. The Ubiquity and Contradictions of Medieval Sex Work

• Medieval Cities and Sex Work:
  • Stories of brothels being "everywhere," sometimes literally in the same buildings as schools ([02:21]).
  • Sex work was viewed as a necessary "urban management tool" in burgeoning cities packed with transient young men.
• The Theological Dilemma:
  • Medieval authorities, influenced by thinkers like St. Augustine, often tolerated sex work to "protect" good women and maintain social order.
  • St. Augustine compared prostitution to a sewer in a palace—ugly, but necessary ([08:01]).

“Prostitution is like a sewer in a palace. It’s ugly, but it’s necessary. If you get rid of it, everything will overflow with awfulness.”
— Dr. Kate Lister, paraphrasing St. Augustine [08:01]

2. Sex Work as an Economic Survival Strategy

• Economic Opportunities:
  • Sex work was often chosen for survival ("it allows you to make money in a very short space of time, unlike any other job" [11:51]).
  • For many women, it offered rare social mobility unavailable through other means.
• Social Mobility Threats:
  • Sex work upended the expected order, inciting further stigma because it allowed "uppity women" new forms of independence ([17:26]).

“I cannot think of another job, profession, career that was open to women that has that level of social mobility attached to it.”
— Dr. Kate Lister [17:33]

3. Medieval Definitions and Regulation

• Defining Sex Work:
  • Fluid definitions: a "prostitute" could simply be any woman with multiple partners, not just those who exchanged sex for money ([13:22]).
  • Terms like “whore” were insultingly flexible and persist across centuries.
• Sumptuary Laws and Dress Codes:
  • Specific laws, such as London's "striped hood" rule, attempted to mark sex workers with distinct dress ([15:53]).
  • Rules included details like banning fur trim—indirectly acknowledging some women were financially successful ([16:07]).
• Zoning and Municipal Brothels:
  • Brothels were often officially sanctioned and restricted to designated red-light districts (e.g., “Gropecunt Lane”, “Love Lane,” “Cock Lane”) ([29:04], [31:04]).
  • Penalties for violating zoning included public shaming, head shaving, and stocks ([29:04]).

“Zoning was a really popular medieval tactic, which is where you get the gloriously Gropecunt Lane…”
— Dr. Kate Lister [29:04]

4. Health, Supervision & Church Involvement

• Church-Owned Brothels:
  • The Bishop of Winchester controlled Southwark’s red-light district; women were called "Winchester Geese" ([26:49]).
• Ordinances & Inspections:
  • 15th-century government ordinances imposed rules on brothel workers, including health inspections—primarily to protect clients ([26:49]).

5. Rescue Fantasies and Stigma

• Medieval “Rescue” of Sex Workers:
  • Periodic waves of “saving” sex workers, often more about moral posturing than offering real support ([33:00], [34:01]).
  • Rescue nuns' houses required high degrees of penitence and often enforced harsh treatment ([38:07], [39:04]).
• Persistent Stigma:
  • Despite attempts at reform, women who left sex work rarely re-integrated into society freely.

“What is the exit strategy? Are you gonna beat them up for years and years, and then can they just go and live a normal life, or do they have to spend the rest of their life in penitent resignation and being told that they’re awful and horrible?”
— Dr. Kate Lister [39:04]

6. The Cyclical and Inevitable Nature of Sex Work

• Reform and Clampdown Cycles:
  • History sees repeated cycles of toleration, regulation, crackdown, and return to toleration ([06:15]).
  • Efforts by monarchs like Henry VIII dressed as “moral crusades” were usually about land grabs or power ([42:38]).
• Persistence Despite Efforts at Abolition:
  • Sex work survived regulation, moral panic, and repression—often by simply relocating ([44:15]).

“There is no way of abolishing sex work...it’s just not going to happen.”
— Dr. Eleanor Jaenega [44:25]

7. Ordinary Lives and Community among Sex Workers

• Records and Stories:
  • Medieval sex workers appear frequently in records, vividly showcasing ordinary women navigating a harsh world ([45:08]).
• Solidarity and Agency:
  • Despite hardships, brothels fostered communities and sometimes pragmatic support systems, such as retirement homes for older workers ([41:02]).

“If I had a time machine, I would go back definitely to the medieval brothel to just ask questions.”
— Dr. Kate Lister [45:59]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It’s much more of a male fantasy than anything else that these people are doing this because they really, really, really like sex instead of really, really, really like being able to eat.”
  — Dr. Kate Lister [12:38]

• “A lot of the time there are more jobs than there are people. So you have young men kind of coming in from the outside. And that's where the real worry is, isn't it?”
  — Dr. Eleanor Jaenega [09:00]

• “We know that sex work allowed people to make a lot of money in a very short space of time, but they don't like to admit that quite clearly.”
  — Dr. Kate Lister [16:25]

• “Sex work is outside of all of that... It's sex for fun they can't be doing. But it's sex only for pleasure, and worse than that, for profit for some people. So they took a seriously dim view of things.”
  — Dr. Kate Lister [26:05]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [05:24] – Introductions and the unique challenges of discussing sex work in medieval times
• [07:50] – St. Augustine’s influence and “the sewer in the palace” analogy
• [13:17] – Fluidity of medieval definitions: what is a “whore”?
• [15:53] – Sumptuary laws and the struggle to identify/mark sex workers
• [26:49] – Brothel ordinances, health checks, and the Bishop of Winchester
• [29:04] – Zoning: red-light districts, street names, and enforcement
• [34:01] – Medieval and later approaches to “rescuing” women from sex work
• [41:02] – Retirement homes and pragmatic solutions for former sex workers
• [42:38] – End of zoning, Henry VIII’s crackdown, and unintended consequences
• [45:08] – Why studying sex workers reveals so much about everyday life

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Tone and Approach

The episode maintains an engaging, candid, and often humorous tone. Both speakers are unapologetically sharp, irreverent, and always historically rigorous. They pepper the conversation with memorable anecdotes, colorful language, and a persistent drive to uncover the human realities behind centuries of moralizing rhetoric.

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Further Resources & Recommendations

• Dr. Kate Lister's Work:
  • Harlots, Whores and Hackabouts: A History of Sex for Sale
  • A Curious History of Sex
  • Podcast: Betwixt the Sheets (History Hit Network)

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This episode stands as a fascinating window into not just medieval sex work, but the economic, gendered, and theological knots that have always surrounded it—and continue to echo to this day.

Transcript

[Matt Lewis]

From long lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarninger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life. Only on History Hit with your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe.

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[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

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[Dr. Eleanor Jennifer (Podcast Host)]

Paid testimonials Results may vary. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Jennifer and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the Normans, from Kings to Popes to the Crusades, we delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here. According to Jacques de Vitry, a theologian in 13th century Paris, the city had a problem. This man of God was driven to despair because, as he put it, prostitutes were everywhere in the streets and neighborhoods of the city, seeking to drag passing clerics by, by force into their brothels. If the clerics refused to enter, they immediately shouted after them, sodomite. In one and the same building, there might be a school upstairs and a brothel downstairs. While in the upper part, the masters taught their pupils, in the lower part, the prostitutes plied their nefarious trade. In one part, the prostitutes quarreled with each other and their pimps, and the other part, the scholars argued on scholarly matters. To modern listeners, this seems astounding, even if it is perhaps a little overblown to make a particular religious point. But from a medieval standpoint, this was all pretty par for the course in a truly grand city. But how did such a situation come to pass? And how could such a world exist from within the theoretical holy confines of medieval Christendom? I'm Dr. Eleanor Jaenega, and today on Gone Medieval From History Hit, I'm delighted to be revisiting a chat I had back in March 2024 with the inimitable Dr. Kate Lister, host of our sister podcast, Betwixt the Sheets. Kate's latest book is a fascinating and irreverent history of female sexual pleasure, and she's also the author of Harlots, Whores and A History of Sex for Sale. Kate and I talked about medieval sex work and the complex economic and social realities that existed alongside the best intentions of a theoretically religious society. And just a little warning.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

When Kate and I get together, the language and conversation can be a little fruity.

[Dr. Eleanor Jennifer (Podcast Host)]

So if you have young or sensitive ears who usually join you to listen

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

to Gone Medieval, you might want to

[Dr. Eleanor Jennifer (Podcast Host)]

wait till after the watershed before giving

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

this one a listen.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Enjoy.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Well, well, well, if it isn't Kate Lister. Hello. I love this for me. I absolutely love this for me, because as the author of the Fabulous Harlots, Whores and Hackabouts, a history of sex for Sale, we're going to talk about one of our very favorite subjects today, which is sex work in the medieval period.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

A fascinating subject, one of my favorites.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, I really can't get enough of it because it's such an interesting theological problem. Right. And it's also a way of managing urbanity and it's a way of, you know, like, looking after how people behave in large groups. And there are so many parts, parts of just Common life that it touches, as well as, you know, intellectual life, actually.

[Dr. Eleanor Jennifer (Podcast Host)]

Really?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Right.

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[Dr. Kate Lister]

For me, the history of sex work, and it doesn't really matter what time period you're looking at, but it says an awful lot about that respective culture's attitudes to sex, to women, to commerce, to censorship. Because the figure of the sex worker, she's almost always gendered as a woman, and she becomes this sort of repository of all these anxieties and concerns and fears. And there's never been one approach that's got it a quote, unquote. Right. You'd have thought they'd have worked out, maybe we should just leave them alone, Just give them some protection under the law, Stop people being jerks to them and kind of let them crack on. But when you look at the history of sex work, it's very cyclical. You see that coming back is wherever you are. The authorities seem to move through periods of uneasy toleration, and then there's a clampdown, and then there's laws, fines, punishments, banishments, all these horrible things. They might go as far as expulsion in some cultures. I don't think they did it in the medieval paper. In some, it was that you'd be put to death and then kind of gives way again to uneasy toleration again. And you see this cycling all throughout history. But medieval sex work is particularly fascinating because they do tie themselves up in these quandaries of is it okay? Is it not okay? What should we do about it? Is it the woman's fault? Is it the man's fault? What does God think about all of this? And it's just they get themselves into such knots with it relentlessly.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

It starts really early, doesn't it? Because it starts, I mean, even before the medieval period. Right. When we really want to think about it, it's St. Augustine's got a lot to answer for in this, doesn't he?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

St. Augustine is one of the religious philosophers, scholars, people who. His thoughts on this get dragged up a lot throughout the medieval period. I don't think he's the only one to say this kind of stuff, but basically what he says is that prostitution is like a sewer in a palace. It's ugly, but it's necessary. And if you get rid of it, then everything will overflow with awfulness. And the fact that he just compared sex workers to a sewer seems to have escaped everybody for a long time. They all went, yeah, oh, that's a good point, Augustine. Well done. And so that becomes this rhetoric that people throughout the medieval period in Britain and in fact all across Europe return to again and again is this idea that we don't like it, but it's necessary. And if we don't have sex workers for these virile young men to turn to that they'll become horribly and absurdly deranged or worse, gay. That argument crops up in Italy quite a lot.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, it's interesting, right, because it's often linked really specifically to cities, right? Because that's where you get all of these young men who are unmarried, right? So when you're building a city or something like that, you need a lot of laborers. Cathedrals don't build themselves. And a lot of the time there are more jobs than there are people. So you have young men kind of coming in from the outside. And that's where the real worry is, isn't it? And it's really interesting thing to me too, because I find it so funny that they justify the need for sex workers because they're like, oh, gosh, well, if these guys don't have someone to have sex with, then they're just going to go crazy and they're going to burn the city down.

[BetterHelp Testimonial Speaker]

Right?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

That's the argument.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah. But then it's like, how does that see at the same time with the medieval understanding of women as like the sexually aggressive ones. And I'm like, guys, I don't how you're squaring the circle, right? Because on the one hand it's like, oh, well, you know how women are. Yeah, it's on their minds 24 7. But men, they will burn the city down. They will.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

It's a very odd state of constant distance that can get themselves into. Because the other thing that you see cropping up is not only the argument that, look, if we don't have women that are willing to have sex for money, then the men will become deranged. That or gay. That crops up. But the other rhetoric that you have going on all through that is if we don't have sex workers, then quote, unquote, good women will be in danger. You see that one cropping up a lot. So again, it's this strange state of cognitive dissonance where on one hand, medieval science tells us that women are far more lusty and uncontrollable than men. But then also you've got this idea of good women things to come into this. Good women and bad women. I'd love to sit down with a medieval person and go, can you explain this to me? Because I don't quite get what is going on here at all.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And it's interesting too, because even when we're thinking about from a religious standpoint, good women and bad women, there's always the best woman, which is everyone's imaginary mommy. Right. The Virgin Mary. She's amazing because it's like she never even had sex, but could still be a mommy.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Well done, Mary.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Like everyone, round of applause. And then there's the worst kind of woman who is a harlot. This is then Mary Magdalene before she converts. Or there's a lot of the so called prostitute saints.

[BetterHelp Testimonial Speaker]

Right.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

There's Afra of Augsburg, Jezebel.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

She wasn't a saint, was she?

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Jezebel, Mary of Egypt. And then there's also these like apocalyptic figures because. Right. In the medieval imagination. Right, there's the Whore of Babylon.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yes.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Who is one of the people who's going to come at the end of the world and you know, you know it's over for you because this hot chick is going to come riding a dragon.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And drink the blood of the innocents. And it's like the worst thing that you can possibly imagine a woman is, is a sex worker. Right?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah. When you get people selling sex and they're being talked about in medieval sources, again, we're limited by the sources about who's saying what, what has survived to us and so forth. But what you don't really get is much of an understanding of the fact that these are just predominantly women, although men were selling sex too, is they're doing it because they need to make money and they need to survive. And if we don't make money, they're screwed. And it's the same reason why people sell sex and have jobs to this very day is that it allows you to be able to make money in a very short space of time, unlike any other job. There is no qualifying, age, skill level, skill set that you need. Anyone can do it and you can earn some money pretty quickly. Please, listeners, don't run out and do this on my recommendation. But it's simply the point that if you find yourself in a situation where you need money, sex work has always been there. But you don't get any sense that these people might be doing it because they need the damn money. You get more of a sense of they're doing it because they're insanely horny and just naturally wicked and almost as if they're so lusty, of course they're going to go in a brothel. And the fact that they get paid for it is just this icing on the Cake, which is completely bonkers. And it's much more of a male fantasy than anything else that these people are doing this because they really, really, really like sex instead of really, really, really like being able to eat.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Oh, yeah. I mean, you're bang on here, I think, right? Like this is part of the Mary of Egypt thing. Right?

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[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And you know, she's one of the ones who. She's a very, very successful sex worker and she makes all this money, but she's in it for the love of the game. Yeah. Like a big part of it is like at one point in time she goes on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and she's just giving it away for free on the boat on the way over. And it's also a big theological question where theologians will be sitting around and when they debate sex work, which they do a lot, endlessly sometimes people will say, oh yeah, well, you are a prostitute. Their term, not mine. If you have had, you know, more than three sexual partners and you're a woman, that. That's just. It has nothing to do with money being exchanged. It has to do with the fact that you as a woman have had sex with more than just your husband and that's it. So it's over for you, right?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah, it becomes a very flexible term, like whore. You can still deploy that insult to this day and have no idea if anybody's ever actually sold sex for money. It's just a rather handy insult. And it really depends who you're talking to, of how they actually define this. But the definition of what is sex work is something that is still an issue to this very day. And it's haunted every attempt to regulate sex work throughout history. Because when you think of, I'm going to regulate sex work, if you wanted to, if you were that person, and there's been many of them, but immediately the person that you think of is somebody I don't know, they work in the streets or they're in a brothel. They do this full time. This is how they make their money. And it's very transactional. But the reality is there's so much gray amongst this is what you're talking about. There is like full time, full service sex work, that's what we'd call it today. But this is something that people might drift into temporarily. This is something that people might use to just top up an income or how do we square kept mistresses within this? Because is that not somebody that is exchanging sex for money or just, you know, royal mistresses, servants that are having sex with the Master of the house. You know, it's an abusive thing, but perhaps they're doing it for goods and gain. It's very, very difficult to pin it down as to. What do you mean when you say somebody selling sex or a whore or a common woman, as they might have said in the medieval period? And part of that is that you do get these sumptuary laws that come in dictating what you are a sex worker. So you are definitely gonna dress like this. And one of them is 13, I think it was in London, and they had to wear a raid hood, which is a striped hood. And there's detail in there, but it can't have any lining and it can't have any fur trim. So. And it's just a really shitty, like, stripy coat. But that's all part of this. Like, we're trying to identify who these people are, and it's actually very, very difficult to do that.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And that's a really interesting point as well. You know, when you get this hint there, right, when they're like, well, you've got to wear this hood of Ray. And it's like, okay, all right, well, I'll wear the hood of Ray. But it can't be lined. All right, well, that indicates that some of these women are making money. It's like a tacit admission, right, that it can be a pretty good job.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

I'd never thought about that before, but you're absolutely right. If they're having to put caveats in there of like, dare make this look good. Don't you dare accessorize this. But we know that sex work allowed people to make a lot of money in a very short space of time, but they don't like to admit that quite clearly.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, and it's an interesting one, too, because I think within this, because of the amount of money that, like, women are able to make, part of the social pushback against it certainly is that, well, oh, no, this can make things really topsy turvy because, say you're an ordinary woman and you're a peasant, right? Like 80% of society, and you manage to run off from your lord and you get to a city, and then you might just say, okay, well, I guess that I'm going to do sex work because, you know, what are my specialized skills? You know, I've got the same skills that most women have, which is like

[Dr. Kate Lister]

brewing, baking, got to earn money.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah. And I've got to earn money somehow. So, okay, well, here we go. I'm doing sex work. You can, in theory, get paid very well. And then you've completely subverted social expectations for a peasant woman.

[Hayden (Fantasy Fangirls Podcast Producer)]

Right.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And there's one thing that the medieval period really, really doesn't like. Its uppity peasants and certainly uppity women.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

You know, I think you're absolutely right. I've always thought that about the whole history of sex work is why should this be so stigmatized? And it's stigmatized to this very day. I mean, we've got very unhealthy, weird attitudes about sex. And that absolutely plays into it. But I'm convinced that one of the reasons sex workers are so stigmatized is because they are predominantly women. Again, not exclusively, but it was a woman dominated industry that allowed women access to social mobility. Nothing else would. If you look at someone like Nell Gwynne, who was born in the back streets of London in absolute poverty and then managed quite literally to shag her way to the top and become the mistress of the king. I thought about it, thought about it. I cannot think of another job, profession, career that was open to women that has that level of social mobility attached to it. And again, the caveat, Nelgwen, is Nelgwyn, for every one of her, there are millions of people that had an absolutely rotten time of it. But I think that part of that stigma is the threat to the order. I really do. Because it allows women's social mobility, it allows them to be independent of men, it allows them to run their own business and men are the clients and they hold a lot of power. So I'm convinced that a lot of the stigma is the threat to the order that it presents.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I mean, of course there is specifically within a medieval context, Medieval Europe is a predominantly, predominantly, predominantly Christian society. Right. And Christianity has a super uneasy relationship with pleasure and sex. Right?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yes. It's very easy to think of the medieval Christian church as being fiercely anti sex, but I've always thought of them are people of like, well, someone who's anti sex, they sure think about sex a lot.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Ironic, isn't it?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah, they're coming on and on and are you sure, you know, you don't intersex? Because like, we're really thinking about it an awful lot here, guys. But pleasure is a very, very difficult one for them to square because you get this sort of anti sex rhetoric coming in towards the mid to late medieval period and a lot of it's geared towards women. But they cannot escape this bind that they get into, which is that people have to have Sex. They have to have heterosexual sex or we're gonna run out of little Christians pretty quick. So they come up with all these rules to sex isn't sinful, but the pleasure is.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

If you're having terrible sex, feel free,

[Dr. Kate Lister]

feel free, you help yourself. But obviously it has to be within marriage. And then, I know you've spoken mess before, but they come up with all these rules. It can't be on a feast day, it can't be on a Sunday. It can't be on Whitson. It can't be before a period, after a period, before. Like, really, when you boil it down to, it's like two Tuesdays throughout the entire year. And even then you can't enjoy yourself.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

But then there's also, at the same time, a worry there too, because one of the things that is understood in terms of medicine at the time is that for conception to happen, they think that women have semen like men.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Like, now we understand medical science is advancing so fast that people that graduate medical school, by the time they do, half the stuff that I've learned throughout that short period will be obsolete because it goes that quick. But for much of our history, we just went, well, the ancient Greeks said so, and we will never, ever change this again. So the idea that women made semen or didn't make semen, I think that was Hippocrates or is one of his buds. It was this idea that women were cold and kind of clammy and men were lovely and dry and warm and that our bodies were trying to make semen, but we were so rubbish. We just made menstrual blood, whereas men's bodies were the perfect temperature. So presumably they must have had menstrual blood, but they managed to turn their blood into semen. And all the Greek doctors were like. And that is the perfect.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Well done.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Well done. You made semen. Hurrah. Look at you just sitting there making that semen. And they viewed women as almost like jars that this semen got put into and then a baby would grow. It wasn't that the womb was this, like, living. Well, they did think it was living, but it was like this receptacle. The magic semen gets put into it, and that's when all the magic happens. It's almost like the womb is just like a jar to hold it. That's kind of how they viewed it. So, yeah, the medieval people were still on this idea of hot and cold and faulty semen and all this stuff.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

You need to have, like, the right amount of pleasure, direct Sex so that everyone jizzes. Then you mix that together and then you get like, bada bing, bada boom, there's a baby, right?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yes.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

But this real issue too, with pleasure, right? Because the way medieval people talk about. And again, this is St. Augustine, right? The way that they talk about pleasure as well, and they're like, and pleasure is so bad. And pleasure is a function of the fall of man, right? Like that's the original sin. You know, Eve eats the apple in the garden and, you know, now we talk about it, they go, oh. And she realizes they're naked. But for medieval people, they're like, she realizes she's naked and she's like, oh, that's sexy. And that's the sin.

[Matt Lewis]

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[Dr. Kate Lister]

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[Hayden (Fantasy Fangirls Podcast Producer)]

Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Fellas.

[Hayden (Fantasy Fangirls Podcast Producer)]

I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson.

[Stephen (Smash Daddy, Fantasy Fangirls Podcast)]

And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy.

[Hayden (Fantasy Fangirls Podcast Producer)]

And we are currently deep diving Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before.

[Stephen (Smash Daddy, Fantasy Fangirls Podcast)]

That's right.

[Monica Reinagle (Nutrition Diva Podcast Host)]

Hey.

[BetterHelp Testimonial Speaker]

Hey.

[Stephen (Smash Daddy, Fantasy Fangirls Podcast)]

So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter.

[Hayden (Fantasy Fangirls Podcast Producer)]

And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong.

[Stephen (Smash Daddy, Fantasy Fangirls Podcast)]

News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find fantasy fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts.

[Monica Reinagle (Nutrition Diva Podcast Host)]

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[Dr. Kate Lister]

And I guess sex work becomes again this laser focus of all of this weird discourse because you're not paying to have sex in order to have a baby is the antithesis to all of this medieval what temperature are you? Are you too hot? Are you too cold? Don't have too much pleasure? Don't make a baby, but don't enjoy it. Sex work is outside of all of that. And it's everything that this moral quandary opposes. It's sex for fun they can't be doing. But it's sex only for pleasure, and worse than that, for profit for some people. So they took a seriously dip view of things.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

So speaking of the humoral theory and all of these things, what do we know about sort of sexual health for women at the time?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Okay, so we know some things. Again, we're limited by the sources that survive. So for example, there is a document that survives from the 15th century, so late medieval. And it's called the Ordinance touching on the government of the stew holders in Southwark under the direction of the Bishop of Winchester. So the Bishop of Winchester owned the land that the red light district was built on, basically. And the women who worked there were called Winchester Geese. It was all like a nudge, nudge, hint, hint. But this document, it pretends it's from the 12th century, it's actually from the 15th. It draws up a lot of rules that these women are allowed to live by. And some of them are bonkers things like they can't wear aprons. I don't know why that's a thing. But they do have some caveats in there that they can't work if they're in ill health, they can't work if they are. It's correct, the burning sickness, which I'm gonna assume is an sti. But these rules aren't really set down because they're trying to keep the women healthier. They're set down to sort of protect the clients more than anything else. But it does show us there's a kind of a rudimentary concern around health, sex and catching something, and that that is something to be avoided. And it would seem that the brothels in the bishops district were subject to regular inspections and that the women were subject to regular inspections as well. Again, we need to be careful before saying that, oh, isn't it nice to try to keep all these women healthy? They're not really.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I think you've also kind of touched on something here that I think people get really surprised when they learn, you know, there's the bishop and all his brothels, like, congratulations, you know, and the Bishop of Winchester. You know, that's a really plum position too. You know, Winchester is really a fancy place at the time, but I think especially in the later medieval period, right. It's got to the point where cities are like, well, yeah, we don't like this. We don't think it's great that sex work is happening, but obviously it has to happen. So here you go, here's your official certificate stamp here. And you are the municipal brothel. Now it's legal.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah. Sex work, you get zoning, it would be called. And this is a time tested method. And you certainly seeing it being deployed across medieval Europe. Throughout the entire span of the medieval period and beyond, it was still being used in Renaissance Italy. It was used in France right up until the Second World War. And occasionally it was used in Leeds until very, very recently. They trialled a zoning approach here. But the idea was that, right, okay, so we're not going to be able to get rid of this, so we are going to attempt to contain it. And they would do that by finding an area of the city and they would just basically say, it has to happen here. If it doesn't happen in here, you are in serious trouble. And occasionally in medieval records, we have documents of people that were selling sex or were whoremongering outside of where they should have been. And the penalties could be quite severe. And one of them, I think it was the 13th century. The penalties if you're selling sex outside of the zoning area is that you'll be put in the stocks, you'll have your head shaved, and that you'll be sort of paraded through the city and then sent back to the zoned area so they weren't messing around. Again, that's this Augustine idea of we don't like it, but it's necessary, so we're going to attempt to try and contain it. And generally when that happens, it affords the people in their some rights, some level of safety and laws tend to be brought in and they can be tacked. It's still not a friend to the people selling sex because they're still being regulated by the state and they still have to perform to their set rules. But I guess it's better than being exiled and having your nose cut off, which was deployed in some places in some situations. But yeah, zoning was a really popular medieval tactic, which is where you get the gloriously Grope Cut Lane comes from the famous medieval street.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I'm really close in London to where the Groep Cut Lane was. No, I'm kind of here at. In the city. And there are two extant ones that were zoned. So there's Love Lane. Love Lane, which is right near Guildhall Grub Cut Lane. Rip to a real one. I think we lost that, I think in the 18th century, something like that. But I'm also right near Cock Lane, which is over by St. Bart's and it's like, just does what it says on the tin. And I. I think Cock Lane is one of my favorite because now if you said that, people would go, oh, you're just having a laugh. You just have a dirty mind. And it's like, no, that's what they meant.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

I love that about the medieval people that they just go, no, we're just gonna call it exactly what it is. I've got some other examples. So there's Groepcunt Lane, which is just fabulous. And it turned up in a number of cities. But we also had Codpiece Alley. Oh, apparently Hawesley down was. Was another one, which eventually got renamed to Horsley down, which is gone. His tweets.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I love that. Oh, cute.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Is there a place with lots of brothels? It might be called something like Haw's Nest or Sluts Hole, things like that. And then eventually they all get. They all get renamed. But I suppose if the average medieval Peasantry person probably wouldn't have a map. Where am I going? Right. Cock Alley. All of these things, halls lie down. You need something very obvious in order to find where it is, I suppose.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I think it's so funny because, you know, here in London, at least half the streets in the old city are named after. It's like, yeah, that's Poultry Lane. Yeah, that's Leather Lane. That's Fish Street. You know, where they're just like, yeah, that's where you want fish, you go to Fish Street.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And they're like, well, it's a form of commerce. Exactly like any other. So there you go. Just say what you get.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Exactly. But that is also an example of zoning. So we're going to do it, but we're going to do it there.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

From Prague, of course, I've got a Prague story. One of my favorite things with zoning happens at a point in time where it's like rather the vogue to save sex workers. And, you know, especially in kind of the 14th century where there's like a vogue where it's like, oh, well, I'm gonna buy out this brothel and then I'm gonna give the ladies, they can all live here and be kind of nuns or whatever, but I'm closing the brothel down. And there's this guy, Master Nicholas. I think he gets it in his head that he's gonna go, like, save all these ladies from a brothel. But what he actually does is just goes into this brothel and chases them all out and is like, get out of here, girls. Like, I like, this is my brothel now. And they go to, like, the municipality, and they're like, excuse me, there's a priest in our brothel. And the city officials are like, right you are, Nick. Get out, Nicholas. Like, get out. And they win. And then he goes and complains to the Archbishop and he's like, well, hey, I was just trying to, like, save these girls. And they're like, well, they got a license, bro. Like, I don't know what to tell you. Like, you've got to leave them alone. But do we have a lot of examples of that? Of this kind of a, you know, desire to save these poor, unfortunate women? Right.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Endlessly. That is something that you will see throughout the history of sex work. And I'm always quite suspicious of the motives behind them. Not to impugn people that, you know, generally do want better lives and situations for people living in poverty and, you know, people that really need help. But you do sort of get this, and it still exists today, is like, people who have a pure interest in sex and women, but don't want to actually say that. So they kind of position themselves as saviors of like, well, I'm gonna work very closely with you. And like William Gladstone, the Victorian prime minister, he's a perfect example of that. He used to go roaming in the streets at night looking for fallen women because he was so desperate to save them.

[Stephen (Smash Daddy, Fantasy Fangirls Podcast)]

Uh huh.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

It's like, well, yeah, you get a lot of that. I mean, the medieval conception of helping to save somebody is probably not as helpful a lot of it would be. You need to renounce this life entirely and possibly go and live as a nun. I'm unaware of any kind of state support to help people exit selling sex. It was much more just, these are awful punishments if we can catch you doing it somewhere where we don't want to. But the idea of rescuing women, it's there the whole way. But it becomes incredibly popular and fashionable in the 19th century. You get all of these rescue societies that gets set up and it's often middle class, well to do women with this very particular idea of a particular person who needs saving. And often they encounter these people and realize that they're not who they think that they are at all. And then there's quite a shock. So you get that. You get like them putting rules in place like, we will only save the most penitent and you have to be below 25 and you can't have had any children and basically you have to be the perfect victim. And they become very popular in the 19th century.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

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[Dr. Eleanor Jennifer (Podcast Host)]

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[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Medieval approaches to getting women out of sex work. It's like the most common one, right, Is like, go get married. But of course they get really testy if you are married and are still selling sex, right?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

No, you can't do that. That's not allowed.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

There's this order crops up in the 13th century, I think it is called the Magdalens. And it's like, oh, I just feel so bad about having been a sex worker, I have to devote my life to Jesus. And they're really quite hard on them. So it's much stricter order than any of the other nuns. Not that like it's a real cakewalk being a nun a lot of the time. But, you know, they'll beat them for all different reasons. For example, with both that and the Victorian approach, one of the things that really kind of sticks in my craw is it's like, I have no doubt that some of these women did feel really terrible about having done sex work. But is that not just a function of a society that constantly tells you you're bad, you're bad, you're bad, you're bad. Like, this is a terrible thing to do. So of course you're going to feel bad if everyone is telling you that constantly. And you know, so there's this kind of like question about what does this say? I think socially, right, when you look

[Dr. Kate Lister]

at something like that and you just think, what did they want from people exiting sex work? Which is again, back to this idea of like, it's a very gray area. A lot of the times people drift in and people drift out. And some people will do it for a while and some people will do it for a long time. But when people are being saved, quote unquote by the Magdalene Societies or St Nicholas, I think, didn't he stop some women from going on the game, Sam? Yeah, there isn't a sense from them of like, well, how penitent do they have to be for you to be okay with this. Like, what is the exit strategy? Are you gonna beat them up for, like, years and years, and then can they just go and live a normal life, or do they have to spend the rest of their life in penitent resignation and being told that they're awful and horrible? I've never really understood that because, you know, my reading of the Bible isn't particularly in depth, But I'm pretty sure Jesus was okay hanging around with hookers. But I distinctly remember him saying, don't be mean to them. But that doesn't seem to have translated into the medieval period at all. The idea of rescuing is, where would you go? I do often think about this. What happens when you couldn't sell sex anymore because there will be people. You know, maids absolutely played a blinder of a game and made loads of money. And the trajectory seems to be is that you start selling sex in a brothel, and then eventually you might become the madam of the brothel. But I imagine then, as in now, that the stigma around it is so severe and the sanctions around it are so severe, how do you exit that? Like, how do you integrate yourself back into quote, unquote, good society when you're carrying all of this judgment and baggage and stigma? No wonder it's so hard for people to exit. I don't know. I haven't got. I've never seen a record of a medieval person that was like, I did this for a while, and then I stopped and I just decided to make cider instead or whatever.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

It is one of my favorite groups of quote, unquote, penitent sex workers. I think this is 14th century, and they're in southern France, and basically a rescue nunnery gets set up for them, and it's essentially just like a retirement home.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Oh, I'm so glad to hear that.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Like, an entire brothel just goes, yeah, okay, no, we're done.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

We're done.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And they go live in this other house together. And they're like, yeah, no, we don't sell sex work anymore. And basically, like, the entire town pitched in, and they're like, well, I guess if we really don't want them doing this, well, they're gonna have to live somehow. And so they, like, built him a house. They, like, essentially had a pension. And then the ladies were like, yeah, no, I'm retired now.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah, that's amazing. That's so progressive. I love that because that's the thing about all of these, like, attempts to abolish sex work and to stop people doing it and moralizing them. It's like, well, okay, bud, what plan do you have in place for them then? Because they still need to earn money, they still need to feed themselves, they still need to support their families, because what's the plan? You know, so the fact that they would have a retirement home, I think is that that makes me so happy.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I thought it was really cute. It's great. Like the girls are just hanging out now. They're like, no, we're done.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

The girls are just hanging out.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Oh, yeah, it's remarkable, that one. But I do think that it's nice because it does show us, you know, some pragmatism. Granted, it's a whole spectrum of people in a thousand years, right? And you know, people get really bonkers too. But there are these possibilities. But the high and late Middle ages, you have like this series of municipal brothels, you have like stamps and everything. But then at the turn into the early modern period then, right, that all goes out the window, doesn't it?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Oh, Henry VII decided that he was the person to start telling people about sexual.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Oh yeah, this guy, like a noted, not horny guy. Henry viii, Right, yeah.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

The guy who have completely normal sexual practices.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Real monk or Henry.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Yeah, right, Absolutely.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Yeah.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

He decided that he was going to basically liquidate the Southwark area and get all of the brothels. So what it was is it was kind of dressed up as this. We're worried about their souls and it's a very, very moral thing. But it wasn't. It was because Henry had broken with the church and he wanted the land that the Bishop of Winchester owned. And in order to get it, he was going to have to kick him out along with everybody who was working on that piece of land. So the bankside stews were ordered to be closed and this royal procession comes into the area accompanied by trumpeters and heralds at arms. And they basically announced that the King, considering that the dissolute and miserable persons who have been suffered to dwell beside London and elsewhere in places called the Stews have lately so increased and engender such corruption among the people as to be an intolerable annoyance to the Commonwealth youth being there, elude by fleshy lusts and evil disposed persons conspiring robberies, has with advice of his counsel, decided to extinguish such abominable license. And he gave them 10 days to pack up and get out.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Real moral crusader. Great.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

But they didn't abolish it. Of course he didn't. All he did is that they went back into the city because. So that was on the outskirts of the city. They went back into the city and they just went to different places. That's all that happened.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

I mean, there is no way of abolishing sex work. I mean, like, the Victorians tried real hard. Did they?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

So lots of people have tried.

[BetterHelp Testimonial Speaker]

Yeah.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

And it's just not going to happen. But, yeah, I find it so interesting. There's always some guy, you know, there's always some guy, and it's usually some rich guy explaining what women are supposed to be doing without ever giving a thought to, well, I don't know, maybe I could help them out, isn't it?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Exactly. It was just this, right, pack up under the guise of morality that obviously it's become such a nuisance and so horrible that we need you to all go away right now, conveniently exiting the land that Henry now wants to claim because he's so moral. It's just like. And gone. You assholes.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

You know, I got to say, one of the reasons why I really love studying sex workers in the Middle Ages is it's such a great way of learning about regular women, like, just normal women, because they show up on the records all the time because everyone is just constantly thinking about them. Just normal bunch of guys who aren't supposed to have sex, just thinking about them all the time. But it's just a thing that ordinary women do all the time. And I like when I get to see ordinary people. You know, I hate Henry vii, I hate kings, and, you know, people who just come in and boss everyone around while, you know, behaving like absolute pratts. Whereas this is a bunch of women who are clever and they're thinking on their feet and they're doing the best they can in a really restricted society. And I just think they're cool. I like my sex workers. I think that regular ladies are cool. That's my takeaway.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

I agree completely. And I, you know, I don't want to pretend for a second that they were having the bestest time ever, but in medieval society, it was pretty rough no matter what you were doing or who you were. And people turning to sex work and using sex work as a way to support themselves. They were probably playing the best of the hand that they got dealt. And I think it really takes something like, we've established the heft of the stigma and the thou shalt nots surrounding it, and yet it endures. And whenever you've got a persecuted community, you get a really strong sense of. Of community and solidarity. And if I had a time machine, I would go back definitely to the medieval brothel to just ask questions. I just want to know. We know some names that crop up here and there and we've got like things like the ordinance of the service of the stews, like tell us some of the rules and things. I'd just love to sit down with them. Like, how does this work? How do you feel about it? What brought you here? Are you gonna be here for a long time? What do you charge? What are your. I would just love to know the answers to those questions because they have escaped us. But I'm sure that then, as now, sex workers were a very vibrant community of people who could stand up for themselves.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

That is, I think, the perfect place to leave a wonderful discussion as always. Where can the good listeners of Gone

[Dr. Eleanor Jennifer (Podcast Host)]

Medieval get more from you?

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Oh, it's so much fun talking to you, Elena. They can drop by and hear my podcast Betwixt the Sheets, which is your sister podcast, part of the history hit family. If you want to know more about the history sex work, my book Whores, Harlots and Hackabouts is available for sale and I think I talk about it as well in my other book, A Curious History of Sex.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Fantastic. Kate, thank you so much as always for stopping by.

[Dr. Kate Lister]

Oh, anytime. It was my pleasure.

[Dr. Eleanor Jennifer (Podcast Host)]

My thanks again to the brilliant Dr. Kate Lister. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award winning original TV documentaries, including Kate's brilliant new documentary, Dicking about and my recent film with Matt Lewis, the Ascent to Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II,

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

as well as ad free podcasts.

[Dr. Eleanor Jennifer (Podcast Host)]

By signing [e-mail] subscription, you can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval.

[Dr. Eleanor Jaenega]

Until next time.

[BetterHelp Testimonial Speaker]

Foreign.

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[Stephen (Smash Daddy, Fantasy Fangirls Podcast)]

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