It’s actually a myth that medieval women who didn’t marry by the end of their teens had to resort to prostitution to survive- in core Europe women tended to marry in their early twenties anyways, and medieval women had economic options other than prostitution which could at least keep them alive, and enough charity available that these kinds of economic setbacks were survivable.
This was when GDP of the Uk was close to 3000-4000 per person, or poorer than modern Ukraine... this was post industrial revolution after London had entered what we'd now say is middle income status...
In the Medieval period when real GDP was $300-600 per person per year it would have been vastly worse and the poverty vastly more pressing.
Seriously. the catholic church was running brothels with ~1000 prostitutes in London in the 1100s... when London's total population was 18,000-40,000... and that was just the one Burough where they owned the brothels... there were plenty of private brothels, speak-easy brothels, and women not affiliated with a brothel working as prostitutes as well.
.
Edit: sorry to pick on you but there's this revisionism I got everywhere I've posted this essay that somehow prostitution wasn't common, people weren't poor in the past, and everything that was expansively written about by contemporaries in early modern novels was just fiction and obviously Feilding, Defoe, Richardson, John Ford, Thomas Middleton, and every other writer about the lower classes from 1500-1900 ever wrote about was just sensationalist fiction to be completely ignored.
Prostitution existed in the Middle Ages. It was legal and common. That does not mean that unmarried women had no other recourse; the word spinster meaning what it does is evidence that the default unmarried woman supported herself through something other than prostitution.
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Notes -
It’s actually a myth that medieval women who didn’t marry by the end of their teens had to resort to prostitution to survive- in core Europe women tended to marry in their early twenties anyways, and medieval women had economic options other than prostitution which could at least keep them alive, and enough charity available that these kinds of economic setbacks were survivable.
3% of the victorian population, 6% of the female population, were employed as prostitutes in 1887... in London. One of the most industrialized cities of the day and one that actually had factory work for women.
This was when GDP of the Uk was close to 3000-4000 per person, or poorer than modern Ukraine... this was post industrial revolution after London had entered what we'd now say is middle income status...
In the Medieval period when real GDP was $300-600 per person per year it would have been vastly worse and the poverty vastly more pressing.
Historical GDP source
Hell the Catholic church owned the brothels in many areas because it was just seen as a fact of life and they were trusted to morally absolve and oversee the "sinner"
Seriously. the catholic church was running brothels with ~1000 prostitutes in London in the 1100s... when London's total population was 18,000-40,000... and that was just the one Burough where they owned the brothels... there were plenty of private brothels, speak-easy brothels, and women not affiliated with a brothel working as prostitutes as well.
.
Edit: sorry to pick on you but there's this revisionism I got everywhere I've posted this essay that somehow prostitution wasn't common, people weren't poor in the past, and everything that was expansively written about by contemporaries in early modern novels was just fiction and obviously Feilding, Defoe, Richardson, John Ford, Thomas Middleton, and every other writer about the lower classes from 1500-1900 ever wrote about was just sensationalist fiction to be completely ignored.
Prostitution existed in the Middle Ages. It was legal and common. That does not mean that unmarried women had no other recourse; the word spinster meaning what it does is evidence that the default unmarried woman supported herself through something other than prostitution.
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