Throughout England’s history, prostitution underwent a seesaw of legality. Though it was intermittently allowed, it was consistently relegated to the outskirts of London. In 1161, Henry II gave brothels official status by extending the Bishop of Winchester license to conduct houses of prostitution in Southwark on the south bank of the Thames, effectively making this area the first red-light district of England. The brothels were known as “stewes” and the women who sold their commodity there were known as Winchester Geese. However, in 1505, Henry VII closed the Bankside brothels due to the outbreak of syphilis, though the houses reopened the following year.

When Henry VIII took over the throne and dissolved monasteries in an effort to conserve money, many men and women became displaced and unemployed, forcing women to take to prostitution, a quickly growing profession. Though he did not officially close the Bankside whorehouses until 1546, Henry attempted to reform his country by exacting punishments on prostitutes and those who employed them. Whores, in the licensed area of Southwark, were allowed to sit in the doorways of brothels, but could not shout at passers-by or solicit customers in any way.

In 1513, he made a proclamation that punished brothel-keepers by branding them on the face. The same penalty was applied to the prostitutes themselves, making an entry into respectability impossible. In 1623, this “Branding Act” was extended so that “any woman convicted of taking goods valued at more than twelvepence would suffer in addition to a whipping or other punishment the branding of a T with a hot burning iron on her left thumb." Branding was usually done just after a sentence was handed down to ensure that magistrates could see “the smoke from the offender’s singed skin to prevent a less than scalding hot iron from being used in return for a bribe” [7].

Perhaps the most detested of female deviants, the prostitute suffered rules and regulations before even being punished. One notable code the trade when it was licensed, was that prostitutes were not allowed to wear aprons, as these were marks of respectable women. Once prostitution was outlawed, the women were vulnerable to a number of punishments, including branding, having their hair shaved off, ears clipped, and noses slit. A contemporary poem entitled The Whore, written by Lady Seymour Dorothy Fleming, expounds on the inventory of punishments associated with the abhorrent act of prostitution:

Of all the Crimes condemn’d in Woman-kind
Whore, in the Catalogue first you’ll find.
This vulgar word is in the mouths of all
An Epithet on ev’ry Female’s fall.
The Pulpit-thumpers rail against a Whore
And damn the Prostitute: What can they more?
Justice pursues her to the very Cart
Where, for her folly she is doomed to smart.
Whips, Gaols, Diseases – all the Whore assail
And yet, I fancy, Whore will never fail.[6]

An image of a group of offenders being carted. Townspeople are gathered to observe the procession. [17]

As the poem indicates, just as in the case of adultery, public shaming was a large part of the chastisement of prostitutes. Whores and bawds were to be taken in open carts, accompanied by minstrels, whose objective was to draw up and excite a crowd.

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