A Curious History of Sex

The Oldest Profession ^{Sex Work in the Ancient World}

Despite the old adage, sex work is not the world’s oldest profession: medicine is. In 1952, anthropologist George Peter Murdock of Yale University published his research on the social customs of hundreds of indigenous people around the world, and while he found no evidence of prostitution, the figure of the medicine man was universal.

Other scholars such as Mary Breckinridge have suggested that midwifery is the oldest profession: ‘The midwife’s calling is so ancient that the medical and nursing professions, in even their earliest traditions, are parvenus beside it.’^{2} Trying to work out what is the ‘oldest’ profession is actually something of a wild goose chase as professions, and indeed money, are quite recent inventions. Homo sapiens has been wandering around the planet for about 200,000 years, and the earliest evidence of coined money dates to 640 BC in Lydia, Asia Minor. Even systems of bartering goods, rather than money, depend largely on the domestication of cattle and cultivation of crops, and that dates to around 9000 BC.^{3} This means that for most of human history, we have done without money. Given that money is arguably the most dominating influence in how we live our lives today, it is sobering to remember that the only value money really has is that which we collectively attach to it. Ultimately, it’s pieces of paper and discs of metal which somewhere along the line we have all agreed are special. We managed perfectly well without it until our ancestors thought that those gold rocks were nicer to look at than the other rocks.

Without money and commerce there are no professions. There is no evidence of selling sex among the Maori before Europeans arrived in New Zealand carrying with them syphilis and flags. Victorian explorers were surprised to discover that the Dyak people of Borneo had ‘no word to express that vice’.^{4} When the Christian missionary Lorrin Andrews translated the Bible into Hawaiian in 1865, he had to invent new words to teach the islanders about the concepts of sexual shame and infidelity.^{5}

There is very little evidence of a sex trade among the Native Americans until the Europeans turned up to ‘civilise’ everyone. Even then, the only evidence that exists is that the invaders believed all indigenous women were promiscuous.^{6} The commodification of sex, and the selling of sexual favours as a profession, is firmly linked to the establishment of money and economic markets. The causal effect of establishing commerce with the selling of sex was seen in a pioneering experiment by economist Keith Chen. In 2006, Chen introduced the use of currency to a group of capuchin monkeys, and taught them to buy grapes, jelly and apples with tokens. The female monkeys began trading sex for tokens almost immediately.[39]

It was Rudyard Kipling who first coined the phrase ‘the world’s oldest profession’ in the short story ‘On the City Wall’ (1898). The tale opens with the immortal line: ‘Lalun is a member of the most ancient profession in the world.’^{7} The expression has since fallen into common parlance as a historical truth. But what Kipling wrote after those words perhaps offers more insight into what is, at least, a very ancient profession indeed: ‘In the West, people say rude things about Lalun’s profession, and write lectures about it, and distribute the lectures to young persons in order that Morality may be preserved.’^{8} As Kipling observed, attitudes to selling sex are not fixed but are culturally determined. Researching ancient sexuality is difficult for many reasons, but particularly because historical records are always mediated through the author’s world view. What many historical texts understand as prostitution often speaks far more of the author’s own cultural prejudices than the practices being described.

For example, when the Spanish conquistadors colonised the Aztecs in 1521, they translated the Aztec Náhuatl word ahuienime as ‘prostitute’ or ‘whore’. But this translation was done by Spanish Catholics, and what they saw as ‘prostitution’ was not what the Aztecs saw at all. The word ahuienime is more accurately translated as ‘the bringer of joy’, and has religious, spiritual connotations. Unable to move beyond their own cultural attitudes, Spanish texts describe the ahuienimeltin as whores. As Ulises Chávez Jimenez argued, ‘the Spaniards did not understand the role of the ahuienimeltin in Aztec religion, where they legitimised cosmic models that allowed a deep communion with the Gods’.^{9}

Some of the earliest written evidence of sex work comes from Ancient Mesopotamia. Verses written about the Babylonian goddess Inanna (also known as Ishtar), composed sometime between 2000 and 1000 BC, contain these lines:

Bear in mind it’s the goddess Inanna herself who is offering to bend over for one and a half shekels which goes some way to show that the sacred could be sexy as well as funny in the Ancient World.

The Code of Hammurabi, dating to 1754 BC, sets down the Babylonian code of law and covers a number of laws pertaining to the protection of the ‘ladies of the town’ (1680):

Legal protection and state regulation of sex work is found throughout the Ancient World. The Arthasastra of Kautilya is an Indian text on politics that was composed sometime between the second century BC and the third century AD. The Arthasastra devotes a chapter to discussing the duties of ganikadhyaksa, the ‘Superintendent of Courtesans’, and details rules for women in this profession. Sex work was regulated by the state and sex workers paid taxes each month. As with most professions, sex work was densely layered. For example, a ganika was appointed by the state to attend the king and received a salary of 1,000 panas every year, whereas bandhaki worked in brothels, and pumscali worked on the streets. The Arthasastra uses the word rupjiva to describe a woman selling sex, which translates to ‘one who makes a living out of her beauty’.^{12}

One of the most contentious areas of study within the history of sex work is the practice of so-called ‘Sacred Prostitution’ in the Ancient World (also called Temple or Cult Prostitution).[40] It’s also an important area of study, as the belief that selling sex was once a sacred exchange directly challenges many of our modern narratives around sexual services. As Mary Beard has argued, the myth of sacred prostitution provides ‘a model for alternative humanities paraded by our archives, available for new living, for different lives’.^{13} The figure of the ‘sacred whore’ or ‘sexual priestess’ is a prominent figure in many spiritualist groups today who use sex as a healing ritual. Sacred prostitution is a notoriously difficult subject to research, let alone verify, and historians continue to debate if the practice existed at all. All that is left to try and decipher is a handful of ancient sources, and we have no way of knowing if they are factual or fictitious.

The ancient Babylonian epic Gilgamesh (c. 1800 BC) tells the story of a temple ‘moll’ (1604) called Šamhat who serves Ishtar and tames the wild man Enkidu through her sexual skills.^{14} This is one of the earliest written references to sex work ever found, but it does not claim to be anything but a story. The earliest account of sacred sex work in a non-fiction text comes from the Greek historian Herodotus’s (c. 484–425 BC) account of sixth-century neo-Babylonia:

Although he writes histories, Herodotus is what might be politely termed an ‘unreliable narrator’. He is a historian in much the same way that Disney is a historian. What’s more, he is clearly out to smear the reputation of the Babylonians and is projecting his own negative views around sexuality onto them – so, is any of this true? Possibly. There are other accounts of similar customs, but they could just be rehashings of Herodotus. Four hundred years after Herodotus, the historian Strabo (64 BC – AD 21) describes ritual sex practised at Acilisene in Armenia. Here, people honoured the Persian goddess Anaitis by dedicating their daughters to serve her in the temple before they were given in marriage.^{16}

In De Dea Syria, the Greek writer Lucian of Samosata (AD 125–180) describes a ritual practised in Syria where women would have to have sex with a stranger in a public place as an offering of payment to the goddess Aphrodite.^{17} The Augustan historian Pompeius Trogus wrote: ‘There was a custom among Cyprians to send their virgins to the sea-shore before marriage on fixed days, for employment in order to get dowry-money, and to make a first-fruit offering to Aphrodite, a dedication to preserve their virtue in the future.’^{18} The Greek lyric poet Pindar (518–438 BC) also writes about sex workers being dedicated to Aphrodite’s temple in Corinth after the Olympic games: ‘O mistress of Cyprus, here to your grove Xenophon has led the hundred-limbed herd of grazing women.’^{19} But because Pindar himself called this work a skolion (drinking song), it’s unlikely this anecdote is anything more than a good yarn.^{20}

There are also several references in the Old Testament to qadeshes, a word many have translated to mean male and female temple prostitutes. Kings 23:7 reads ‘He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the temple of the Lord, the quarters where women did weaving for Asherah.’^{21} But the devil is in the detail, and many historians dispute the translation.

The most tangible evidence of sacred prostitution is the eight-hundred-year-old Hindu tradition of the devadasi in India. Devadasi means ‘female servant of God’, and refers to women who are dedicated to the goddess Yellamma. The earliest written records of dancing temple girls called devadasi dates to AD 1230–1240, from the time of Raja Raya III in Maharashtra.^{22} A thousand-year-old inscription in Tanjor Temple lists four hundred devadasis in Tanjor, four hundred and fifty in Brahideswara temple and another five hundred in the Sorti Somnath temple.^{23} Devadasi looked after the temples, and sang and danced in devotion to the deities. They were also courtesans, supported by wealthy patrons who sought out the devadasi because they were sacred women. They dazzled the courts with their poetry, music and devotion to the goddess. Classical Indian dances such as Bharatnatyam, Odissi and Kathak are all legacies of the devadasi. Sex was a part of their world, but it was incidental: they celebrated art, beauty, love and the divine. When the British colonised India, they brought with them their rigid world view and were unable to see the devadasi as anything but prostitutes. So repulsed were they by what they saw, the British set about shaming and dismantling the devadasi institution.

In 1892, the Hindu Social Reform Association petitioned the Governor General of India and the Governor of Madras to erase the devadasi: ‘There exists in the Indian community a class of women commonly known as nautch-girls. And that these women are invariably prostitutes.’^{24} The British missionaries taught India what a ‘prostitute’ was and why it was so shameful. Support for the devadasi disappeared; they were socially shunned and stigmatised. Cut off from patrons and the temple, they tried to earn money by dancing at private events and selling sexual services. Eventually, the devadasi were outlawed throughout India in 1988. The tradition continues in southern India, but the women are no longer respected. Now they are stigmatised and without protection many abuses occur, but impoverished parents still dedicate young daughters to the service of the goddess.

Selling sex is not the oldest profession in the world, but sex just might be the oldest currency. We’ve always had sex, always enjoyed sex, and therefore always traded sex. Attitudes to the sex trade are not fixed but are constantly in flux. Sex workers in the Ancient World were often sanctioned by the state, protected by the law, and, if not always respected, then at least accepted as part of day-to-day life. There is also evidence that those who sold sex were once revered as noble and holy. Selling sex is heavily criminalised around the world today and is a far cry from being regarded as socially acceptable, let alone sacred. This change in fortune speaks of dramatic shifts in cultural attitudes towards sex. In cultures where sex was not regarded as inherently sinful, attitudes to sex workers were markedly different from cultures that repressed sexuality. As patriarchal, puritanical attitudes to sex developed in the West, women’s sexuality came in for particular censure, and the women selling sex were condemned most of all. Rather than condemning the sex trade wholesale as immoral and dangerous, perhaps we should ask what the world would be like if those selling sex were again respected, instead of marginalised; if they were given rights, instead of rescue. I doubt sex workers will ever again be regarded as priestesses, but at the very least they should be respected as professionals – from one of the oldest professions in the world.

Public Relations ^{A History of the Tart Card}

The sex trade is as old as civilisation itself, and as long as people have bought and sold sexual services, the authorities have been trying to regulate it – usually through criminalisation and punitive measures. Over the centuries, sex workers have been punished with fines, imprisonment, excommunication, exile, mutilation and even the death penalty. Most punishments have involved public humiliation, intended to shame people into better behaviour. For example, ‘Cockatrices’ (1508) in fourteenth-century Augsburg had their noses cut off if they were found soliciting on holy days.^{1} Whereas, in 1713, on the Isle of Man, Kath Kinred, ‘a notorious strumpet’ who had ‘brought forth three illegitimate children’, was sentenced to be ‘dragged after a boat in the sea at Peele Town… at the height of market’, as an ‘example to others’.^{2} Despite such punishments, no measure has been successful in abolishing sex work. Criminalisation has only succeeded in forcing the trade underground, and creating dangerous working conditions. The dilemma faced by every ‘wagtail’ (1553) operating under criminalisation throughout history is how to stay safe and attract clients, but without also attracting the attention of the law. One of the most effective ways to do this is to advertise, and one of the most iconic and recognisable forms of sex-work advertisement is the humble ‘tart card’ – the brightly coloured calling cards that once covered telephone boxes the length and breadth of Britain.

The 1953 Post Office Act made it illegal to advertise in or ‘in any way disfigure’ telephone boxes in the UK.^{3} When this Act was repealed in 1984, business-savvy ‘flossies’ (1900) saw an opportunity to advertise. Although tart cards are still found in the telephone boxes of cities all around the world, they garnered something of a cult following in Britain, and are most immediately associated with London (they are known as ‘slag tags’ in the North).^{4} The 1990s were the heyday of the tart card, and every telephone box from Soho to King’s Cross was festooned with a patchwork of porn. The need to keep production costs down in terms of wording and materials, while still standing out, resulted in a truly unique art form.

The early cards were printed on cheap paper and feature simple block designs in black ink against brightly coloured (often neon) backgrounds. Kitsch silhouettes of nude women, stilettos, suspenders or sex toys directly communicate the type of service on offer. Technological advancements influenced the design of the later cards, which feature fancy type-sets and glossy photos of erotic fantasy figures puckering up, bending over or staring seductively down the camera. To the disappointment of many clients, these photos were rarely of the providers, who were far too canny to out themselves to the authorities in a phone box.

From the ‘strict mistress seeking human toilet’, to ‘naughty nannies’ who will ‘rub it better’, and ‘schoolgirls’ seeking some ‘hanky spanky’, there was something for everyone. Although men were certainly selling sex, most tart cards are from female providers (cis and transgender) advertising to male clients. The cards offered sex workers a basic form of client screening. The only contact information provided was a phone number, which the client would call to discuss what they wanted, as well as arranging a time and a place to meet. The address would only be given out once the provider established that this was someone they wanted to see.

By 2001, tart cards had become such a nuisance in the UK that the Criminal Justice and Police Act made placing them in phone boxes punishable by six months in prison, or a fine of up to £5,000.^{5} You can still find the odd card here and there, but as the mobile phone has rendered the phone box redundant, and the internet has created a far safer way for sex workers to advertise to clients, the tart card has had its day.

We might think of advertising as a very modern phenomenon, but sex workers have always understood the value of marketing. The eighteenth-century literary blockbuster Harris’s List (1757–1795) was an annual almanac of London sex workers, and a masterclass in self-promotion. A forerunner to the modern tart card and TripAdvisor, the list detailed the appearance, skills and prices of up to two hundred women selling sex in the capital. The list was a collaboration between Sam Derrick, an Irish Grub Street hack and poet, and a London pimp, Jack Harris. Only nine known volumes of the list survive today (1761, 1764, 1773, 1774, 1779, 1788, 1789, 1790 and 1793), and they are scattered throughout various archives around the world. There have been a handful of reprints, but until 2005, if you wanted to see the list, an appointment at an archive and a pair of white gloves would have been required. It wasn’t until historian Hallie Rubenhold undertook the herculean task of researching and editing the list in her publication The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack and the extraordinary story of Harris’s List (2005) that the list was dusted off and shown to the public anew.

As you may well imagine, Harris’s List was a hugely popular work, functioning as both a practical guide to the sex industry and softcore pornography for those not brave enough to actually arrange a meeting. The list itself straddled the boundaries of fact and fiction, and we will never be able to attest to its accuracy. Was Mrs Howard’s ‘grove’ truly ‘ample enough in size to take in any guest?’ Did Emma at Mother Grey’s really drink whiskey for breakfast and possess a ‘magic ring… as much sought after as the philosopher’s stone’? Were Miss Simms’s ‘low countries’ like ‘a well-made boot’?^{6} We will never know.

Harris’s List could make or break the fortune of London’s ‘horizontal workers’ (1870). Like every profession, sex work was (and still is) densely layered, and a favourable review would allow a girl to command more money, richer clients and go up in the world. A bad review, or an accusation of carrying the pox (like Miss Young of Cumberland Court, who is described as spreading ‘her contaminated carcass on the town’), would see business dry up quicker than sawdust on sick.^{7}

Despite Jack Harris’s narrative style of a cheeky scamp about town sampling the delights of the city at random, the selection process was highly competitive, and Harris knew the marketing value of his list. The memoirs of Fanny Murray, one of the most celebrated eighteenth-century courtesans, provides valuable insight into the processes. Harris described Murray as ‘a fine Brown Girl rising nineteen years next Season… Fit for High Keeping with a Jew Merchant’.^{8} The favourable review allowed Fanny to command higher prices and court a better class of clientele. But she had to apply to Harris to have her name ‘enrolled upon his parchment list’. She then had to be interviewed, submit to a medical examination, agree to give Harris a fifth of the money she earned and sign a contract that stipulated she must forfeit £20 to Harris if she was found to have lied about her health during the examination.^{9}

Expensive this may have been, but it could be a worthwhile investment. Harris’s List helped to launch the careers of several of London’s top courtesans, such as Lucy Cooper and Charlotte Hayes. Charlotte Hayes is favourably described in the 1761 edition of Harris’s List:

Charlotte clawed her way up from desperate poverty to become one of the most successful bawds in London, and madam of the King’s Place brothel. When she died in 1813, she had amassed a fortune of over £20,000, achieved celebrity status and hobnobbed with royalty – not bad for a girl from the gutter.

Lucy Cooper’s life is detailed alongside Charlotte’s in Nocturnal Revels (1779), and a description of Lucy is also found in the 1761 edition of Harris’s List.^{11} Both women achieved fame and fortune, but Lucy did not have the business acumen Charlotte had and failed to save for the inevitable rainy day. Lucy lived a life of excess and saw her wealthy, elderly protectors die one by one. Finding herself grog-blossomed, partied out and the wrong side of thirty-five, Lucy was unable to replace them. Having set nothing aside from her heyday, she could not meet her debts and soon found herself destitute and in debtor’s jail. She died in squalid poverty in 1772, just four years after being immortalised in song as the woman who ‘all mankind’ wanted to lie with.

Just over one hundred years after the last copy of Harris’s List was published, the city of New Orleans started advertising the services of its sex workers. On 29 January 1897 an ordinance to restrict all ‘working girls’ (1928) in the city of New Orleans to one area was passed into law. As the ordinance was prepared and sponsored by Alderman Sidney Story the area came to be known as ‘Storyville’. It was the first legal red-light district in the history of the United States and operated until 1917, when the USA entered the First World War and the federal government made it illegal to sell sex anywhere within a five-mile radius of any military base.^{13} Storyville had its own press, which produced guides to the area, known as the ‘Blue Books’; the earliest surviving copies date to 1900. ‘Blue’ referred to the content rather than the colour of the book. Like Harris’s List, the ‘Blue Books’ were widely sold throughout the city. They were available at the railway station, in bars, hotels, and in barber shops. The preface to each edition introduces the reader to the area and explains why the ‘Blue Books’ are necessary:

The ‘Blue Books’ contained details of the most prominent working girls, but more commonly advertised the madams at whose establishments they worked, such as Miss Bertha Golden of Iberville Street:

‘Octoroon’ refers to race and means to be one-eighth black. One of the most famous ‘Octoroon Parlours’ in Storyville was Mahogany Hall, which belonged to Lulu White (c. 1868 – c. 1931). Lulu made an enormous amount of money and was known for wearing ropes of diamonds and rings on every finger. Mahogany Hall housed up to forty ‘call girls’ (1913), five parlours, and each bedroom had an adjoining bathroom. It boasted mirrored rooms, expensive artwork and plush interiors.^{16} E. J. Bellocq (1873–1949) photographed many of the ‘wet hens’ (1886) of New Orleans and it is believed many of his subjects were shot inside Mahogany Hall.^{17}

When Storyville was closed down in 1917 the ‘Blue Book’ press went with it and the ‘totties’ (1900) relocated to the French Quarter where they had to work illegally.

About the same time as Bellocq was immortalising the women of Storyville, French photographer Jean Agélou (1878–1921) was making his name with his nude and erotic works. One of Agélou’s favourite models was a sex worker known only as Miss Fernande, who became the world’s first pin-up girl. Not much is known about Miss Fernande, not even her full name.[41] In a 1911 edition of the magazine L’Étude Académique, Agélou featured four pictures of Miss Fernande and gave her age as eighteen, meaning she was born in 1893.^{18} We know her name as she would sign her postcards ‘Miss Fernande’ and provide an address where clients could reach her.^{19} Miss Fernande shrewdly marketed herself through her erotic postcards, and came to be known as the first lady of French erotica. Original postcards of Miss Fernande are now highly collectable and change hands for hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds.

Original copies of Harris’s List and the ‘Blue Books’ are also now worth enormous amounts of money. The modern tart card has also acquired value as a form of ‘accidental’ art and there have even been several tart card exhibitions in recent years.^{20} Although these are beautiful and fascinating historical artefacts, it is worth remembering the sex workers who relied on them to advertise their services.

Like many industries, sex work has been revolutionised by the internet and the online sector is now the largest of the UK sex industry. But this is no bad thing. ‘Beyond the Gaze’ was a three-year research project that ran from 2015 to 2018 and looked at the effect of the internet on the UK sex industry. The study found that 89 per cent of UK sex workers felt online platforms had allowed them to work more independently, 85 per cent reported using the internet to screen and monitor their clients, and 78 per cent said that advertising online had improved their quality of life.^{21} Sex workers being able to use the internet to advertise has improved safety and working conditions.

The internet has taken most sex work off the street and certainly out of the phone box. It has made sex work safer for those who choose to do it, and largely reduced the need for calling cards. But this is under threat. In 2018, the US Senate passed the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), and the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA). FOSTA makes posting or hosting online prostitution adverts a federal crime and SESTA makes websites directly responsible for third-party content, the theory being that victims of sexual exploitation can sue websites for any role they played in facilitating their abuse. The result is that multiple internet platforms and website providers have now prohibited sex workers from advertising on them. Without access to online advertising, sex workers are being forced back onto the street and advertising with cheaply produced cards.^{22} Sex workers have the right to work safely and to be respected. The tart card, calling card and sex-worker almanacs are relics and must be left in the past. As beautiful as they are, the best place for them is in a museum.

Feasting with the Panthers ^{A History of Male Sex Work}

Writing to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas from a prison cell in 1897, Oscar Wilde reflected on the crimes of ‘gross indecency’ that had resulted in his serving two years’ hard labour at Reading Gaol. Wilde described the young male sex workers he would entertain at dinner as ‘the brightest of gilded snakes’. He recalled being intensely aroused by the danger of having sex with these ‘delightfully suggestive and stimulating’ creatures, and likened his time in their company to ‘feasting with the panthers’.^{1}

Assumptions around sex work are staggeringly heteronormative: women sell sex, men buy sex, and that’s that. Only that’s not that. It’s not even close. Sex work involves a vast spectrum of gender, sexuality, services, providers and clients. Sex work is a notoriously difficult subject to research. Criminalisation and stigma means that many sex workers are unwilling to speak to researchers. As a result, gathering reliable data on sex work demographics is tricky and estimates can differ significantly. For example, according to the 2016 Home Office Affairs Committee report on prostitution, about 20 per cent of UK sex workers are male.^{2} Yet statistics released by the data collecting website Import.io in 2014 suggested that 42 per cent of all UK sex workers are male.^{3} We may never have an exact figure, but one thing we know is true is that there are a lot of fellas on the game and this has been true throughout history.^{4}

Although there is considerable evidence of men selling sex to other men, the history of women buying sex from men proves far more elusive and unreliable. The Roman poet Martial, for example, mocks an ‘ugly and old woman’ who wishes to ‘receive services without paying for them’. Elsewhere, he jokes that ‘Lesbia swears that she has never been fucked for free. It’s true. When she wants to be fucked, she usually pays for it.’ But this may be a snide dig at older women, rather than evidence that women paid for sex.

Likewise, many powerful female rulers were smeared as insatiable nymphomaniacs by their enemies, which makes teasing out the facts particularly difficult. For example, Queen Ana Nzinga (1583–1663) of the Ndongo and Matamba Kingdoms in Angola was alleged to have kept a harem of fifty men to pleasure her at will. ‘She also maintains fifty to sixty concubines, whom she dresses like women, even though they are young men.’^{5} The problem with this account is it was written by Dutch geographer Olfert Dapper, who had never actually visited Africa. Given the arse-kicking Queen Nzinga handed out to the Portuguese, this may be nothing more than slanderous rumour.

One of the few historical accounts of an all-male brothel catering to a female clientele comes from Mary Wilson, a London bawd who owned a string of brothels in the early nineteenth century. In 1824, Mary published The Voluptarian Cabinet where she described her creation of an ‘Eleusinian Institution’. There, for the right price, a woman could be pleasured by a gentleman of her choosing.

The problem with this account is that it comes to use through the work of sexologist, Iwan Bloch, who wrote about Mary Wilson’s brothel in his A History of English Sexual Morals (1936). Not that I would want to suggest Bloch is lying, but corroborating evidence of Miss Wilson’s premises, and indeed her writing is rather hard to find.

But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and women almost certainly will have been paying for sex throughout history. Even today, women buying sex is a taboo and under-researched subject. But this is changing. In 2016, criminologists Dr Natalie Hammond and Dr Sarah Kingston completed one of the first research projects into UK women paying for sex.^{7} Dr Kingston recognised her preconceptions were challenged by ‘just how similar women’s motivations for buying sex are to men’s’. Dr Hammond found that women pay for sex for a range of reasons, ‘such as wanting to experiment or having a mismatched sex drive with their partner – wanting sex, but not an affair. This parallels what we know about male clients – they come from all walks of life and pay for sex for a range of reasons.’^{8} Thankfully, research is now shedding light on the women who pay for sex, but it remains a hidden history.

Same-sex relationships between men were widely accepted throughout the Ancient World, but they were still subject to strict sociosexual ‘rules’ that dictated what was decent, and what was not. In Greece, for example, an older man (erastes) could take a teenage boy (pais) for his lover, but he would also become his mentor, and tutor him in the ways of the world. Though today we would recognise this as child sexual abuse and institutionalised paedophilia, the Ancient Greeks not only accepted it, but parents would happily offer up their sons to rich old men in the hope that it would give them a boost up the social ladder. The older man was regarded as the active, more masculine one, and the younger man would be expected to assume the passive role – this extended to the sex itself, where the pais would be the one being penetrated (the bottom), and the erastes would be doing the penetrating (the top). It was considered quite unseemly for a grown man to be a bottom. Similar pederastic arrangements were regarded as perfectly normal among the Samurai warriors in Japan, where an older warrior (nenja) would take an adolescent boy (chigo) as his sexual partner in exchange for training him in martial arts and social etiquette.^{9}

During his 1895 trial for indecency, Oscar Wilde described his affection for Lord Douglas as ‘the love that dare not speak its name’. When pushed by Sir Edward Clarke to explain what he meant by this, Wilde referred to the erastes/pais relationships of the Ancient Greeks:

All very noble this may have been, but for a man to simply sell sex, rather than exchanging sex for being mentored, did carry a certain amount of shame. For example, Greek men who sold sex were forbidden from entering temples, public speaking or taking part in official proceedings. In 346 BC, the Athenian politician Aeschines prosecuted fellow stateman Timarchus for addressing the assembly when he sold sex in his youth: ‘The man who has sold the right to his own body would be ready to sell the state as well.’^{11} Similar laws existed outside Athens too. In the city of Beroia, modern-day Veria, an inscription from the second century BC bans ‘slaves, drunks, madmen, and those who have prostituted themselves (hetaireukôtes)’ from entering the gymnasium.^{12}

However, such shame was not universal. The Ancient Hindu sex manual, the Kama Sutra, describes how male sex workers, ‘imitating women’s dress’, give good head to their male clients, with no hint of shame. ‘When it is in precisely this state, driven halfway inside the mouth through the force of passion, he mercilessly presses down, and presses down again, and lets it go. This is called sucking the mango.’^{13}

Attitudes to sucking the mango were not quite as permissive throughout medieval Christian Europe, but we know a lot of sucking went on. On the evening of 11 December 1394, John Rykener was arrested for selling sex to Yorkshire man John Britby in Cheapside, London. Rykener’s questioning and testimony before the mayor’s court are recorded in lurid detail in the London Plea and Memoranda Rolls. What makes this case so important is that Rykener then confessed to dressing as a woman and using the name Eleanor to sell sex to Britby, as well as to friars and members of the clergy. Rykener also admitted dressing as a man to seduce laywomen and nuns.

On first reading, this document appears to be a rare account of a transgender woman in the Middle Ages. So, why then have I included it in a chapter on men in sex work? Because the document is likely to be a satirical jibe at the Church, rather than a genuine case. When this document first came to light, historians were understandably excited at what this could tell us about sex and gender in the fourteenth century. It wasn’t until Jeremy Goldberg did a bit of digging that questions had to be asked about the reliability of the source. Not only are the charges, verdict and punishment missing, but cases of fornication, buggery (anal sex), etc., were not heard before the mayoral courts. Furthermore, the names John Rykener and John Britby appear elsewhere. A John Britby was a vicar in a Yorkshire parish and a John Rykener escaped the Bishop of London’s prison in 1399.^{15} Which makes it likely that the Church is the target of the satire. It has even been suggested that ‘Rykener’ is an allusion to ‘Richard’, King Richard II, meaning the document is mocking the king as whoring himself to the Church for money.^{16}

A hoax it may be, but it still gives valuable insight into medieval male sex work. Clearly, it was widely known that men sell sex, and we can see the levels of stigma and shame attached to it. Whereas in the Ancient World, same-sex relationships were not only accepted and actively encouraged, in medieval Britain, they were subject to ridicule and scorn.

In Anarchia Anglicana (1649), Clement Walker refers to ‘new-erected sodoms and spintries at the Mulberry Garden at S. James’s’.^{17} A ‘spintry’ is a Latin word for a male brothel, and the one at Mulberry Garden once stood where Buckingham Palace does today. We don’t know the names of the people who worked there, but they all took a terrible risk to do so. The Buggery Act of 1533 had been passed to punish ‘the detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery committed with Mankind or Beast’. Those convicted of buggery faced the death penalty. It wasn’t until the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861 that buggery stopped being a capital offence in England and Wales. Lord Walter Hungerford had the dubious honour of being the first man convicted and executed for the crime of buggery under the Act on 28 July 1540. The last two men executed for sodomy in Britain were James Pratt, aged thirty-two, and John Smith, aged thirty-four, who were hanged together at Newgate Prison on Saturday 28 November 1835.

In 1710, John Dunton published ‘The He-Strumpets: A Satyr on the Sodomite-Club’ where he claims that the ‘he-whores’ (1638) have taken ‘all the Trade’ away from the ‘cracks’ (women):

Any self-respecting ‘he-whore’ in eighteenth-century London would solicit for customers at one of the city’s ‘molly houses’. A molly house was not strictly a brothel, but rather a public house, such as a tavern, a coffee shop or an alehouse, where gay men could meet up. In 1709, journalist Ned Ward published an exposé of the goings-on at the capital’s ‘molly-houses’ (1726):

One of the most notorious molly houses belonged to ‘Mother’ Margaret Clap, who also provided beds for her clients. In 1726, Mother Clap’s establishment was raided, and forty men in various states of undress were hauled off in the middle of the night to Newgate Prison. Although most were released owing to lack of evidence, the resulting trial later that year saw three men executed, and two put in the pillory. Mother Clap herself was sentenced to be pilloried and did not survive the experience.^{20}

The case largely depended on the testimony of two sex workers turned informants. Thirty-year-old Thomas Newton and eighteen-year-old Edward Courtney had been caught selling sex in London’s molly houses, and to save their own skins both agreed to testify at the trials following the raid on Mother Clap’s molly house. At the trial of George Kedger, Edward Courtney testified that Kedger had paid to bugger him at Thomas Orme’s molly house. Kedger denied this and claimed he had ‘advised him to leave off that wicked Course of Life; but he said, he wanted Money, and Money he would have, by hook or by crook; and, if I would not help him to some, he would swear my Life away’.^{21} Courtney very nearly did ‘swear his life away’ as Kedger was found guilty and sentenced to death, though he was later reprieved. Newton testified that he regularly sold sex in the molly houses, and had been sodomised by forty-three-year-old William Griffin, forty-three-year-old Gabriel Lawrence and thirty-two-year-old Thomas Wright. All three men were sentenced to death and hanged at Tyburn.

While the threat of capital punishment was not enough to deter the he-strumpets, it was enough to force the trade underground. Subsequently, the names of historical hustlers are primarily left to us in court records as men stood before a judge, shamed, scared and denying everything. But one male sex worker who shocked Britain precisely because he refused to be shamed and proudly called himself ‘a professional Mary-Ann’ was Jack Saul (1857–1904).

Born John Saul in a Dublin tenement slum, Jack first turns up in the court records of 1878, charged with stealing from Dr John Joseph Cranny, who had employed him as a domestic servant.^{22} In 1879 he moved to London to make his fortune as a sex worker. Two years later, Jack put his name to the erotic memoirs, The Sins of the Cities of the Plain or Recollections of a Mary-Ann, With Short Essays on Sodomy and Tribadism (1881). How much of this book is fact and how much is fiction is unknown, but it is a deliciously lurid account of Jack turning tricks in Victorian London.

In 1889, Saul was caught up in what became known as the ‘Cleveland Street Scandal’, when Postal Constable Luke Hanks found eighteen shillings in the pockets of a fifteen-year-old telegram boy in his employ. This was almost twice the boy’s weekly salary and Hanks demanded to know where it had come from. Under questioning, the boy, Charles Swinscow, confessed that he and many of the other telegram boys had been being paid to have sex with wealthy men at a gay brothel, owned by a Charles Hammond, at 19 Cleveland Street in Fitzrovia. The police put Cleveland Street under surveillance, but by the time they finally raided the property Hammond had fled to France following a tip-off. The scandal really got going when the names of those men visiting the house became public. Lord Arthur Somerset and Henry James Fitzroy the Earl of Euston were both accused, and rumours abounded that Prince Albert Victor, the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, was also a regular patron. Lord Arthur escaped to the continent and Prince Albert laid low in India until the heat was off, but the Earl of Euston sued journalist Ernest Parke for criminal libel after he was named in the press.

In court, Henry James Fitzroy claimed he had visited 19 Cleveland Street to see a ‘tableau plastique’ (nude women), and once he realised what was really going on there he left. Jack Saul was called to testify that he had regularly had sex with Fitzroy at Cleveland Street. What was particularly shocking to the British press was not only how open Saul was about earning his livelihood as a ‘sodomite’, but that he actually enjoyed it.^{24} Up to this point, the press had described the boys at Cleveland Street as innocents, preyed upon by corrupt men, but Saul described how much he enjoyed ‘champagne and drinks’ and his ‘very comfortable’ lodgings.^{25} So outspoken was Saul that the presiding judge reprimanded him a number of times. Unable to accept that anyone would be happy as a ‘professional sodomite’, the press viciously attacked Saul as an ‘unquestionably filthy, loathsome, detestable beast’.^{26} The judge instructed the jurors to disregard Saul’s testimony, calling it ‘as foul a perjury as a man could commit’.^{27} Ernest Parke was found guilty of libel, and sentenced to one year’s hard labour.

Despite Saul’s confession the Attorney General declined to prosecute him for indecency. The reason is unknown, but it’s been suggested it was to protect Saul’s wealthy clients. After the trial, Saul returned to Dublin and domestic service, where he worked as a butler. In 1904, he died of tuberculosis aged forty-six and was buried in an unmarked grave.

All throughout recorded history men have been selling sex, whether as part of a sugar-baby relationship, or as straightforward transactional exchange for cash. Whether it was ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ or the livelihood of the ‘professional sodomite’, male sex work has always been with us. Attitudes towards sex work and gay sex have varied from culture to culture, but stigma has consistently dogged both. Even today, when sex work is discussed in the media, the male sex worker is almost always excluded. The narrative of the sexually exploited ‘prostituted woman’ dominates the rhetoric of those who would abolish sex work. No space is given to discussing the men who sell sex and the women who buy it. Why? Because as Jack Saul discovered in 1889, the abolitionists and those who wish to ‘rescue’ sex workers will disregard that which challenges the narrative of the abused victim. Stigma and the threat of the law have kept male sex workers in the shadows for thousands of years, but they deserve far better than this. All sex workers do.