Ode to Margriet Scoonenbou van Hoogendorp | A 17th-century sex worker

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Dear Margriet,

The only source that can be found about you in the City Archives is from 1 April 1694, where you describe in court how you worked as a prostitute in Amsterdam. Prostitution was officially banned in your time, but the profession was nevertheless widely practised. You were ‘taken from Het Pakhuis op de Hoerekolk (Oudezijds Kolk)’, probably arrested while you were trading there. You were eighteen years old and from Enkhuizen. There is no mention of when you came to Amsterdam, or why you became a prostitute. Whether it was an economic decision or something else, what we do know is that you had accumulated substantial debts at the time of your interrogation. At the beginning of her career, a landlady would ‘invest’ in a prostitute (for instance, by buying her nice clothes). You would have to pay this money back from your earnings and the amount of the debt is shown by the selling prices paid for you according to the document.

At the end of 1693, you were bought by Johanna Clijn, landlady of playhouse the Pakhuis, for 57 guilders (from whom is not clear). Although the idea was that these debts would diminish (expressed in a lower selling price), this did not happen very quickly, because thirteen weeks later you were sold again for 53 guilders. The buyer was Willemijn Pelt, who did not own a playhouse of her own but took you to the Hof van Holland on the Zeedijk every day. Your debts must have increased then because you had contracted venereal disease. Willemijn said the treatment cost 40 guilders, while you claimed it was half.

What I find interesting about your story is that the source mentions a word had come from your parents and that Willemijn locked you up because of that. She probably was afraid you would run away. Did your parents know where you were all along, or had they only tracked you down when you ended up with Willemijn? Had you run away from home to the big city, or been sent there to find work? The inexperienced girl from outside who ended up in prostitution was a popular narrative in the seventeenth century. Was this narrative sometimes also reality, or did this girl know very well what she was getting into and hoped to earn money through sex work? The source doesn't mention anything about this, so I can only speculate. Being locked up suggests that either you were done with your experiences in Amsterdam at that point, or that your parents put pressure on you to come back home.

In 1694, Johanna Clijn bought you back. She claimed she had bought you so your mother could pay your debts and then take you away again. These debts amounted to 40 guilders, a considerable sum at the time. As nothing else is known about your family, I don't know if that would have been at all possible for her. Johanna Clijn clearly thought differently about this- was buying girls whose parents were looking for her a business model for landladies at this time? Did it make more money than keeping a prostitute who had had venereal disease?

The records mention that, after this interrogation, you were handed over to your mother, without having to pay the debts. While this is a better outcome than for the landladies, who were exiled for two years, I find it hard to think whether you were happy about that or not. I don't know if your parents knew what you were doing, but I assume your mother thought she had better things to do than pick you up from a court a good fifty kilometres away anyway. I can just imagine that an angry mother was not a cosy conversation partner in the seventeenth century either, but it was still a relief to see her. Most girls did not have a mother (angry or not) coming to pick them up from court, but, like the landladies, were punished.

While there may be more about you in Enkhuizen, in Amsterdam your story only exists from this one source. Only when you are arrested do you briefly appear in the city's history. Like a host of other women, you are barely mentioned in the ‘glorious’ history and yet you are one of the first images people think of when they hear the name Amsterdam. The Red Light District is still a huge draw and sex workers are currently fighting hard to keep it. This largely female group has been present in Amsterdam for a long time, but hardly any individual faces are highlighted. You flash on and off in history, you in the confession books, others in paintings, photographs, or travelogues from then and now.

I would have to have infinite time if I wanted to write an ode to every sex worker in Amsterdam's history, mention every name that practised prostitution, economically and culturally a characteristic of the city. I pulled you out of the archives fairly randomly because your somewhat longer confession gave me food for thought. I hope you don't mind my highlighting your confession this way. Above all, I hope your mother was not too angry and that, whether you were looking forward to it or not, it was still a relief, at the end of the journey home, to be able to hear the South Sea again.

Greetings,

Judith Kraamwinkel

Bronnen

Stadsarchief Amsterdam, Confessieboeken, 5061:340, p. 64

Lotte van de Pol, Het Amsterdams Hoerdom: Prostitutie in de Zeventiende en Achttiende Eeuw (Wereldbibliotheek, 1996)