The World’s Oldest Profession In the Middle Ages

4 min readDec 1, 2024

Readers of Susanna Gregory’s Matthew Bartholomew series will remember one of the minor characters, the wife of a construction worker, who was pregnant every other book. This was always brought up in conversation as interfering with her day job- which was sex work. Why she didn’t join the guild that Matthew’s fiancé Matilda set up for ‘frail sisters’ is beyond me. Would have given her some insurance to cover her growing brood, one hopes.

But then, Ms. Gregory was in an interesting writing position. The Matthew Bartholomew series is based on 1300’s Cambridge. She based many characters, such as Brother Micheal and Clippesby, on real people who showed up in the rolls of Cambridge College. Which means she had to accommodate the attitude towards sex work that prevailed in the high Middle Ages.

Which was different from our current thinking.

An Uneasy Attitude

The Church is famously not in favor of sex outside of marriage or for any reason other than conception.

But…

Even the likes of St. Augustine thought the industry was necessary in order to preserve the sanctity of the ‘good’ girls from marauding young men. Someone (I think St. Augustine) compared sex workers to the sewers of a castle. Without them, the whole building starts to stink. As unflattering as the comparison is, it does leave room for legal sex work.

As a result of this attitude instilled into municipal founders, most cities tried to contain the industry in the same way you would tanning or butchering. Magistrates declared certain areas the designated sex-work place and prosecuted workers who plied their trade outside of it.

The most famous of these areas was The Stews of London. The Bishop of Canterbury held this suburb, which was why workers there were called ‘the Bishop’s Geese,’ and all the inns situated there rented rooms by the hour.

Innkeepers there tended to be men, but they were not allowed to take anything but the rent of the room from the workers. Their inn would also be shut down if any nuns were found on the premises. Married women weren’t supposed to be involved in the trade either, but I suspect that a few husbands didn’t bother asking where the rent came from when it meant keeping a roof over the children’s heads.

Not A Bed of Roses

Not everybody who was there had joined voluntarily. There were definitely young folks coming in from the country to look for jobs as maids that were then tricked or coerced into the industry. Or sometimes it was, because the young lady was ‘dishonored,’ the only option available. Rape was illegal; there was a 1285 law in England that defined rape as sex against any woman’s consent before or after, and declared it a hanging offense. But it was, like many crimes, poorly prosecuted. One study found that one-fifth of the workers in the trade got there by that route.

What’s more, the uneasy relationship governments and churches had to sex in general meant that, especially after the mid-1300’s when the Black Death brought out a heightened morality, more strictures would periodically be put on the sex trade, alongside other types of perceived deviance, such as adultery, gambling, being Jewish, and sodomy. (Emphasis on ‘perceived.’)

During crackdowns, such as when King Louis of France ordered sex workers to work outside of the city walls of Paris, there would be rules about what to wear (yellow sleeves, a certain type of cloak,) and the designated safe space could be cleared away, such as when Henry VIII appropriated The Stews of London.

Their Own Guild

The Church had a handful of saints that ministered specifically to sex workers. These were St. Mary, St. Mary Magdalene, and St. Afra.

With their own saints as figureheads, many city sex workers formed guilds to protect their own. This had mixed results, but it always led to them have a part in civic parades with the relevant saints displayed.

A Possible Career Path

Sex work is one of many industries that doesn’t have a clear career trajectory. It’s a young person’s game, and many, if not most, tend to engage in it sporadically on an as-need basis. This does not bode well for people engaging in it.

There were some who were successful enough to become the owners of their own brothels. This would definitely be the one percent, so to speak, but it is hardly the only industry that benefits only a handful.

There was the chance to retire to a convent, if you forswore your old ways. This is where the Catholic Church’s ambivalence about sex work could work both for and against you: you would have to grovel and abase yourself before the church, but the convent could be snug and home-like. One lucky brothel made a deal with a town so that all the workers were pensioned off and allowed to keep living on the premises in retirement. Considering the other options a poor widow had, that isn’t the worst outcome.

Implications

As ever, the first thing I should point out to the aspiring historical fiction writer is that I have just handed you a great story, complete with characters and localities.

The second thing to consider is that there are many ways to deal with the world’s oldest profession, and we lose something when we refuse its existence. Both sex and our discomfort with it will be with us always, inherent in the human condition, and we only harm ourselves when we shovel them to the side and stick our head in the sand about it.

Sources:

‘Gone Medieval’ podcast, ‘Medieval Sex Work’ aired March 25, 2024

‘The Five Minute Medievalist’ podcast on St. Mary, ‘Mary of Egypt with Sonia Velazquez’, aired on April 3, 2024