Courtesans, coquettes, and coveted desires, Paris was dubbed the Brothel of Europe in the
late 19th century for a reason. Brothels were at their peak in the latter half of the 19th
century with around 200 legalized brothels and Maisons in the city. For centuries,
French kings and aristocrats had kept courtesans and mistresses but the business really became
booming when the palace of Versailles was constructed by the sun king and it was used
as a house of pleasure by him and his descendants until the French Revolution happened. What was it
like to be a kept woman in Paris? How tough was it for a Madame to run a brothel? How did
brothels play a part in the formation of the Vice Police Department? Today we learn it all,
the Nutty History about the Filthy Secrets of Brothels during the age of Versailles.
There was a time when nuns and coquettes lived together harmoniously in convents like dwellings
of Paris and during the middle ages nonetheless. But when the wife of King Philip the second found
out that the nicely dressed young woman she hugged during the sign of peace in the church was
a courtesan, Philip forbade women of brothel work from wearing coats and ordered them to wear golden
belts as a symbol of their profession. He also decreed that a brothel should be located at least
300 meters from a church, and if you are thinking, well that’s not too far, it was because Philip was
considerate to make repenting easier for clients after visiting a brothel. Philip the second was
the first king to regulate brothels in Paris but Louis the ninth removed them altogether from Paris
and forced them outside the city walls. This is how brothels came to be known as bordels for being
located at the borders of the city and thus the word brothel originated. These establishments were
also required to put up a red lantern outside the door as a sign of their work and thus the
concept of the red-light-district was born. When the sun king took over the renovation of the
hunting lodge built by his father, it was evident brothels and monarchy would reconcile again.
Henri the fourth was already infamous for having many mistresses but his grandson,
Louis the Fourteenth developed the estate that became the future seat of power of France as
well as turning it into his garden of desires. The great Sun King had so many mistresses, it's hard
to name them all. There are well-known lovers like the Marquise de Montespan, Louise de La Vallière,
Marie Angélique de Scorailles, and Marie Mancini, but the list is long, very long. Before Louis XIV
moved on to young noblewomen, he practiced his “arts” in the various palaces serving maids and
fathered a child with a gardener-girl. Far from causing a scandal, the court was quite
pleased with this, for it proved Louis was able to father children; a thing of utmost importance
for France. But the sun king was also a major believer in “Rules are for thee, not for me.”
The shadow of the powerful semisecret organization of the French Counter-Reformation, the Company of
The Holy Sacrament, was long on the sun king’s earlier rule. Before his ascension, they tried
to pull a stint of moral reform by imprisoning vagabonds, reforming brothel workers, and
preaching about a brand of ascetic piety deftly satirized in Tartuffe, also known as The Imposter.
During his rule, Louis XIV tried to crack down on the spreading of common brothels in Paris while
building an exclusive establishment for himself in Versailles. One of the reasons behind this
repression was the emergence of venereal disease in Naples in 1494 which soon became a problem in
France as well. In 1658, he ordered all women guilty of solicitation, copulation, or adultery
to be imprisoned in the Pitié-Salpêtrière until the priests or religious officials
said they have repented and changed. In 1667, he also assigned the task of surveying public
girls to the lieutenant-general of police which led to the establishment of the Vice Department.
The surveillance and crackdown on the profession of public girls weren’t only done for the sake of
morality and law but also in the hope to develop a better understanding of how much brothels were
contributing to the French economy. They were also studying how the economy of brothels functioned.
There were vast amounts of dossiers of information on the city’s brothels and patrons but they hardly
utilized that information for anything fruitful. To this day, it remains a mystery why the Parisian
police spent so much time and effort observing an underground economy it apparently had no interest
in curtailing. However, these dossiers do paint a vivid picture of what was going on behind the
sheen curtains of Parisian brothels. While the common police were left handling street
solicitation and common brothels, a particular vice unit called demimonde was created to
monitor the world of elite courtesans of Paris and Versailles. As they were an actual vulnerability
for the French government. Common coquettes could be apprehended and dealt with any time by trying
them ‘en masse’, having their heads shaven, and thrown into Paris’ famous women’s prison,
La Salpêtrière, but the matter of elite courtesans was different. There was a certain number of
elite brothels that catered to male nobility and authorities that were considered legal.
The demimonde not only conducted surveillance on such brothels but also made sure that the madame
running the brothel abided by the strict rules as well as supplied the inspectors in charge of
handling them with a steady stream of information about their patrons. So, in a way, madames were
both domestic spies and informants at the same time. But most of the unit’s resources were spent
watching a particular group of elite courtesans that worked as professional mistresses. Called
dames entretenues or kept women, these women provided intimacy, company, and sometimes even
love for elite men in exchange for being “kept.” Kept here means being financially supported
so that they could establish and maintain a household. La galanterie, the practice of being
or keeping a mistress, was not illegal, even while brothels were. Kept women had oral contracts with
their patrons, which postulated how much the mistress would be remunerated each month, and
whether the patron would set his mistress up in an apartment, buy her new furnishings, pay her bills,
and give her gifts. The mistress’ duties were not delineated but rather were “understood,'' leaving
a great deal of room for misunderstanding. The vice department that operated between 1747 to 1771
gathered every bit of biographical and financial data on the men who hired kept women. In a way,
brothels inspired the system and techniques that are now used by counterintelligence organizations
all over the world. But there is still a burning question, why was this massive surveillance
conducted? One of the most prominent theories is that they were meant for bedtime reading
for King Louis XV and his mistress Marquise de Pompadour, who had been the protector of
the police lieutenant general most responsible for establishing the unit in the first place.
These reports, rumors, and gossip were used by the king and his mistress to enliven their reputedly
fainted intimacy. However, there is a strong argument against this theory that often these
reports contained rumors and gossiping against the king himself that would have only soured his mood.
When Justine Paris and Marguerite Gourdan met in the Bicêtre Hospital and decided to create the
most famous brothel in 18th century Paris, they were both already quite successful as madames.
Marguerite was a coquette herself when she was new in Paris after her marriage to a French
Soldier. With her husband’s permission, she had taken a noble patron with whom she bore a child
and earned a large amount of stipend. But when the generous nobleman died in 1759, she knew she
had to make money from the money she had saved. She opened her first brothel and later separated
from her spouse in 1765. During the next 8 years, she crafted a network of procurers not only in the
capital but in the provinces as well. Her staff was divided into four classes of coquettes, one
who worked in her brothel; a second class who had their own homes and visited their clients; a third
made of artists who merely supplied their normal income with solicitation; and a fourth made up by
the spouses of rich men who wished to earn their own money. Industrious Marguerite didn’t hold any
reservations, she was as eager to supply services to people asking for the same gender as much as
opposite genders. She also had her own lines of toys and tools, as well as offered rooms in her
brothels to couples who needed privacy because of the taboo nature of their relationship. When she
met beautiful, witty, and infamously debauched Justine Paris as they were both being treated
for venereal diseases, it was a match made in heaven. They established a temple of Venus with
an antique shop as its front next to a rich and ancient hotel owned by Charles-François Baude
which legitimized their shop further. This brothel soon became the hottest spot in town. However,
within the first year of the establishment, Justine Paris passed and Gourdan decided to
run the place all by herself. Gourdan enacted twenty articles that the residents must adhere
to. In addition, she wrote a set of instructions for a young lady who wants to make a fortune with
the charms she has received from nature. Among Gourdan's clients were royalty, the nobility,
academics, and clergymen. Casanova, a close friend of Justine Paris, was also a frequent visitor and
wrote his famous memoirs in this brothel. Rue Dussbos wasn’t only known for its best women
but also for its fine dine and wine. To save her women from dreaded government-run hospitals that
were less focused on treating venereal disease and more on treating women themselves, Gourdan
bought a villa at Villiers-le-Bel where she sent her sick or pregnant coquettes. It was known by
the locals as "the convent". However, after the French Revolution, things changed. The new regime
wanted brothels to be regulated and not outlawed and that ushered in a new era for the industry
but Gourdan didn’t live that long to see it. But maybe we could cover that era in another video?
Tell us in the comments if you want a follow-up. And as always thanks for watching Nutty History.