SUNDRIES: An eighteenth century newsletter

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ON-LINE ARTICLES: 18th century signs; Quakers and sex; filles du roi

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GRIVOISERIE: Biting one's thumb

This gesture is most known in English from the opening scene of Romeo and Juliet:

Sampson: Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them; which is a disgrace to them if they bear it.
Abraham: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
Sampson: I do bite my thumb, sir.

The Intermédiaire des Chercheurs of 1879 (171, 221, 248) addresses this subject in regard to an incident between two obscure Revolutionaries (Vaudemer and Lefort). But the discussion not only moves to Shakespeare, but says "This habit was general in England, in the XVIIth century", and quotes Dr. Lodge in Wit's Miserie: "Behold next I see Contempt marching forth, giving me the fico with his thombe in his mouth", and from 1608, Decker, in the Dead Term, describing men around Saint-Paul: "What swearing is there, what shouldering, what justling, what jeering, what byting of thumbs, to beget quarrels." Also offered (in the original English) is Act II, scene 3 of Randolph's Muse's Looking Glass:

Orgylus: To bite his thumb at me.
Abous: Why should not a man bite his thumb?
Orgylus: At me: were I scorn'd to see men bite their thumbs; Rapiers and daggers, etc.

These quotes are preceded by this explanation:

The motion of the thumb has always had an important meaning. Among the Romans, it was by the thumb that one decided the life or death of the defeated gladiator. Among the moderns, to put the thumb in one's mouth was a sign of contempt or challenge, above all in Italy, where making the fig {fico) at someone was a great insult. In Apologie pour Herodate (edit. Le Duchat, a la Haye, 1735, chap XVII, 3), one reads: 'Because, since they.. have once stuck the end of the finger between the teeth as a threat, each knows that if they take their man from in front, it is for lack of being able to take him from behind, etc.'

THE OLD REGIME POLICE BLOTTER: Prostitution

Did Manon Lescaut have to go to New Orleans?

In the novel, she is sent there as a prostitute. But she was the mistress of several men in turn, not available at one time to a wide range of men, and so, under Old Regime law, she was a woman of lewd conduct ("of bad life"), but not a "public prostitute". The same - despite public opinion - could be said of all the royal mistresses. A woman, on the other hand, who, without being paid, slept with more than one or two men in a short period was, legally, a prostitute:

Bordellos & Public Prostitution
ARTICLE ONE
By public prostitutes, in Latin meretrices, are understood women, or girls who debauch themselves, & prostitute themselves publicly, & to the first comer, either for free, or for money... Thus, the woman, or girl, who only abandons herself to one, or two persons, even for money, must not be regarded as a public prostitute, but only a girl or woman of bad conduct.. A woman, even if married, is no less a public prostitute, when she gives herself to the first comer." (Jousse, Traité de la Justice Criminelle, III (273))

This however was a fine legal distinction. In La Police de Paris en 1770 (nominally by Sartine), "kept women" are listed as one of the three classes of prostitute, and even described as the most dangerous: "This class is perhaps the most dangerous of all, because the luxury they display at the cost and ruin of those to whom they belong can seduce many others" (Sartine, 92). The generally matter of fact author strikes a compassionate tone, however, in describing the lot of the normal "working girl":

Although there are many of these women in Paris, they cause no trouble there because of the care with which they are contained. The severity of the punishments they suffer for the most minor infractions, the infamy of their state, the treatments to which they are exposed, the horrible misery to which the majority are reduced, making them the most unhappy, as if the last of creatures, there is no reason to fear that the example of their debauchery might lead to the corruption of those who have not yet fallen into it
(89)

Old Regime law, it should be noted, uniformly treats prostitution itself (as opposed to pandaring) as a female crime, although there is scattered evidence of male prostitution. The subject of the various punishments inflicted on prostitutes merits a separate article. Confinement to the Hospital General (in particular the Salpetrière) was the most common punishment for prostitutes in Paris. Surprisingly, this was not considered a disgracing ("infaming") punishment. (Denisart, Decisions Nouvelles, II (368) (NOTE: This was essentially a prison sentence. Theoretically prison time itself was not a sentence in Old Regime France. With women, however, there was often at least a pretense of reform, and a number of convents existed with the word 'Penitent' in their names, especially intended for reformed prostitutes and other "lewd" women.) But the possible sentences varied widely:

The King's Declaration of July 26, 1713 concerning the correction of women and girls of ill-repute, says that the Lieutenant of Police of the city of Paris, can summarily conduct the trials of these sorts of persons, in the case of public debauch, & scandalous living, in the simple report of Commissioners, & on neighbors' declarations, when it will only be a matter of sentencing them to fines, to alms, or injunctions to quit the premises, or even the cities, & to order that the furniture of the said girls, or women, be thrown on the pavement and confiscated...
Jousse (III, 281).

Such sentences could sometimes be appealed to Parlement (before the Great Chamber), as when the women were "locked up for a time in the prison of the Hospital-General."

Manon, for instance, could have appealed her sentence on this basis. A Military Statute of June 25, 1750 said that prostitutes found with military personnel would be handed over to the local Royal Judge, with no penalty, unless they were "outsiders & without resources", in which case they would be beaten with sticks after being displayed on a sawhorse (Denisart, II, 159). (The sawhorse may have been sharpened, as it was at one point in Abbeville (François César Louandre, Histoire ancienne et moderne d'Abbeville et son arrondissement, 1834, 401).) "But this punishment having always given rise to very indecent remarks, that of March 1, 1760.... wisely banned this practice..." (Intermediare des Chercheurs, 1882-2 (56)). One writer says (without providing a date) that women convicted of transmitting venereal diseases were sometimes dunked in cages (IC, 1885 (369)). The Dictionnaire de la Conversation, in its article on the prison of Bicetre, says, "Under Louis XVI Bicetre was destined to receive men and prostitutes infected with syphilis. Before treating them in the two rooms especially dedicated to them, the surgeons had them whipped." (Other classes of infected people were, as well.) (1852, Tome 3, 167) Overall, the Old Regime adopted a pragmatic attitude towards this activity:

We have in France several Statutes which impose penalties against prostituted women and girls who live in a scandalous and public debauch, but these Statutes are not strictly observed, because of the great number of the guilty it would be necessary to punish. It is enough to make examples from time to time, & to punish those who are most extreme.
Jousse (II, 273)

Other strictures must have simply been humiliating and/or annoying. In Abbeville, the cure of Notre-Dame-du-Chatel became the "Roi des Ribauds" ("King of the Rascals") during one local fair, and one of his rights there (as elsewhere) was to have prostitutes clean his room for all of May. (Louandre (521)) The testimony of prostitutes was, in principle, excluded in court (Du Rousseaud, Traite de Matiére Criminelle (271)). But if Rose Keller was a prostitute (as some have claimed), it did not prevent her from pressing charges against Sade (until being paid off), nor, presumably, did it silence the prostitutes who later claimed he'd poisoned them. One particularity of the eighteenth century in France was that bordellos were initially illegal, though that had not always been the case:

Public bordellos lasted in France until the reign of Francois Premier, who abolished them. Currently there is nowhere in the Cities a district intended for debauched women, nor Places of Ill Repute, & the custom is to condemn prostitutes to be confined to the Hospital for a certain time, the madams to be whipped, sometimes branded, & almost always to be marched through the streets, wearing a straw hat with written signs in front and behind. These penalties normally are pronounced against madams or pimps.
Denisart (II,157-159) - Denisart, rather than having a separate article on prostitution, discusses it (in 1766) under "Lewd places" (Mauvais Lieux - literally, "Bad places").

In fact, most recorded cases (and so those cited here) concern procurers or others who benefited from prostitution, rather than the prostitutes themselves. (One reason might be that prostitutes could often pay a fine, which must have offered a strong temptation for off-the-books "arrangements" between them and the local police.) It was Sartine who re-established "houses of tolerance" in Paris, restarting a tradition in France of prostitution being under legal control. (The Dictionnaire de la Conversation says that this and other "taxes on vice" helped offset the expenses of the police. (1857, Tome XV, 766)) Finally, the police did their best to make use of these women's "access":

They are obliged... to pay particular attention to the men who come through their places, to gather the statements they may make against the government, the plots and the projects they might have to the detriment of the public security and tranquility and if they discover that some of these have commiteed a theft, a murder or other crimes, they are obliged to denounce them...
Sartine (93

He adds that they can be arrested if it is discovered that they have failed to do this (and that they are rewarded when they have). Though examples of this will be shown here, anyone with a cursory knowledge of underworlds may be a bit skeptical as to the willingness of some women to betray men who often lived casually violent lives.

-- THE PALAIS ROYAL

Efforts to 'clean up' the Palais-Royal probably reoccurred from time to time before and after the Revolution. But it was still known for this trade in the nineteenth century.

July 18, 1772. Since last winter, the girls called *hookers* [literally, though the word "raccrocheuses" has no common root with the American term], & and who came at the height of the day to the Palais-Royal to exercise their trade, had been expelled from this garden; but they gradually returned: they began their annoyances with more liberty & impudence than ever, when a new event got them banned without return. M. the Duke of Chartres was walking in his garden; in passing by one of these girls he yelled out in turning towards his retinue, 'Ah, f.... but that one is ugly!....' The self-respect of the offended woman did not allow her to ignore this remark, which she heard very well....'Ah! f....' she replied: 'You have uglier ones in your harem.' So impudent a lack of respect did not remain unpunished, & the punishment fell on the whole species: so that now only the opera girls, the kept women, those that are called high class, can show themselves in this place. Which has not failed to cause great regret, since in the number of these hookers there were some very pretty ones, very well-dressed, who decorated the promenade, pleased the eye & attracted men.. today the Palais-Royal, except on opera days, is only a vast desert.
Bachaumont, Mémoires Secrets (6, 161))

December 9, 1778. The shameful whoremongers of this capital, untroubled by the last police statute concerning streetwalkers, because they did not believe it would be carried out, begin to complain bitterly since they see themselves about to lack this product by the considerable removals of it being made. But libertinage and corruption have been carried to such an excessive point, that other means are needed to dry up the source.
Bachaumont (12, 185)

-- JOHN AND MARK

Jousse says, "When theft is joined to public prostitution, it is punished much more severely", and offers this case as an example. "A Provostal Judgement of May 3, 1714 condemns two girls of ill repute to be whipped & branded, & to be locked up for three years in the Hospital-General of Paris... & then to banished for three years from the Provosty & Vicounty of Paris, for having publicly prostituted themselves in the court of the Champs-Elysees, & having robbed the men to whom they prostituted themselves."

-- WITH THIS RING...

A girl who had been locked up for lewd conduct could be freed if a young man asked for her hand in marriage (as, conversely, until at least the fifteenth century in Abbeville, and possibly other places, a man sentenced to be hung could be spared if he agreed to marry a prostitute (Louandre, 218)). Note that the women here were being detained in the Conciergerie, but that their actual sentence was to be confined in the Hospital-General.

Decision of the Parlement of Paris of March 17, 1716, by which two girls who had been condemned to be confined in the Hospital for lewd conduct were exempted from the sentence by means of two young men offering to marry them, which was done. It is ordered by this Decision (which was delivered without conclusion and only at the request of the two young men), that from their consent they would go to celebrate their marriage at the Church of Saint-Barthelemi in Paris, where the girls were conducted from the prisons of the Conciergerie under good and sure guard by a Huissier, for the marriage to be celebrated in his presence, & the said girls to then be given to their husbands; if not, & in case the boys refused, that the said girls be returned to the Conciergerie.
Jousse (III, 279-280)

-- A DUBIOUS SOURCE

This is an example of the authorities trying - with hesitation - to use a prostitute as a source (Lemesle was suspected of sedition.) It is also one of several examples of a woman being casually disguised as a man (illegal in itself).

D'Argenson to Pontchartrin
Versailles, April 9, 1710

Lemesle has just been arrested and taken to the B. [Bastille], and I owe this discovery to the new indications M. de Piedcourt gave me. Meanwhile our man from Dunkirk did not remain in the place he indicated to me, but as he made me aware of the public trade in which Lemesle was involved with a woman of ill-repute disguised as a man, another woman of the same sort who knew that one indicated his current residence where they were in fact found, the one and the other, it would be easy to arrest her if you considered it appropriate, although there is no indication that if Lemesle has criminal designs against the State, he would have confided them to this unfortunate person, who is known as a true prostitute.
Ravaission, Archives of the Bastille (Tome 12, 1709-1772, 15)

-- NO HONOR AMONG....

This kind of denunciation was probably more dependable than those imposed as a "duty" by the police.

A PROSTITUTE'S VENGEANCE- September 3, 1703 - Finally Le Moine, who had escaped from the Hospital general was arrested yesterday, thanks to a prostitute who wanted revenge on him. He had found, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a convenient hiding place, but he was not wise enough to be able to keep away from bad company in Paris, and he had not been there for more than two hours, when this woman delivered him to the officers who were looking for him.
Argenson, Rapports (128-129)

ON-LINE BOOKS: Medecine; prostitution

These can both be found on Google Print: Paul Delaunay, Le monde médical parisien au dix-huitième siècle, 1906 - 460 pages and C. J. (Charles Jerôme) Lecour, La prostitution à Paris et à Londres, 1789-1870 - 1870 - 372 pages.

Magasin Pittoresque: No 47 - 1879