Urban pleasure guides
Where to go for a night in town? In nineteenth-century Amsterdam leaflets with tips on where one could have a 'peek at lady servants' or meet "greek nymphs" were handed out on the streets. (1) In other metropolia, newsstands offered pocketbooks with addresses and reviews of local brothels and prostitutes. The old guides are still popular. In 2020 The pretty women of Paris , printed in 1883, was sold for 6.000 dollars at an auction. For historians, these urban pleasure guides are interesting resources. Not because the given reviews provide new insights into what men considered important qualities of 'women of the night'. Those remarks have not changed much during the centuries. What is of interest is where public women and houses were located in a metropolis, the prices of services and descriptions of establishments. Fortunately, the originals can still be viewed in libraries or online and contemporary reprints can be bought at reasonable prices. (2)