At the Mercy of the Harbor: Port Life, Prostitution, and Charitable Discipline in Seventeenth-Century Marseilles

Of all the sins and malice that mankind is capable of in its natural sinfulness, none is more irritable to Heaven and attracts more chastisement to Earth than the unfortunate sin of impurity. Those who by divine providence find themselves elevated and charged with the duty to awake others towards the glory of their souls, must channel their care towards stopping the despicable sin of mankind. God is our protector in this fight.

—“Lettres patentes: Confirmation d’établissement de la maison du Refuge de Marseille” Décembre 1685

In the founding charter of Marseilles’ new Refuge asylum for debauched women, the bishop’s galvanizing words¹ convey exasperation and a sincere concern for the spiritual well-being of his flock. Prostitution may well have been in an expansion phase, responding to the growing numbers of sailors, merchants, and other travelers arriving at the bustling port. A closer scrutiny of Marseilles’ ideological and political climate reveals, however, that many women likely came under the authorities’ suspicion, not for proven debauchery, but because they were vulnerable, alone and poor. The case of twenty-year-old Janneton elucidates the more complex reality of prostitution.

In March 1694, Janneton was romantically involved with Jean-Baptiste Gasein, a Spanish merchant whom she presumably met in Lyon. The young girl found herself pregnant with his child, and though she wanted to accompany him back to Spain, Gasein refused. He first unsuccessfully turned to the Hotel-Dieu in Lyon to commit her. Though he fled to Avignon, Janneton followed her lover. The unrelenting Gasein attempted to leave her there, claiming that his father would kill them both if she went to Spain. Still unable to convince the girl to return to Lyon, Gasein sought her institutionalization once again, this time in Marseilles’ Refuge. The directors agreed to admit Janneton on grounds of the “debauchery” she had allegedly committed in Lyon, finally putting an end to her marital ambitions.²

The anecdote and the bishop’s sermon offer a glimpse into the dark underbelly of poverty-related prostitution in the rapidly expanding Mediterranean metropolis. Though separated by several decades, both these episodes were connected in one place—Marseilles’ port. This essay exposes the fates of a specific category of Marseilles’ women, who were indirectly but profoundly affected by naval expansion in the volatile and porous environment of Marseilles’ harbor. As the Bourbon kings grew increasingly interested in Levantine trade in the seventeenth century, they hoped to harness the military and commercial opportunities that Marseilles offered as a gateway to the Mediterranean. While economically the kingdom and the city eventually benefited from these changes, the immediate social ramifications were negative, especially for Marseilles’ women with connections to the port, married and unmarried alike. The establishment of the royal galleys particularly altered the reality of many women; if the transformed galley arsenal did not increase the incidence of prostitution it certainly made it more visible to the local authorities. Influenced by the spirit of the Catholic Reformation, the civic leaders then subjected women to corrective justice more readily than before. To be sure, the web of coalescing forces that ultimately sent many poor port women into the Refuge asylum was permeated with great irony, for the same elites—not least the king—that spearheaded trade and grandeur in Marseilles’ harbor also promoted spiritual and moral ideologies that were difficult to navigate for the wives of sailing merchants and galley prisoners as well as single young girls in search of work. In the restructured port, where elite citizens and sailors shared public space with convicts, Ottoman slaves, and migrating beggars, lone women were made to be the sinister face of poverty and alleged moral depravity.

The first part of this essay highlights the structural changes in the port and the demographic shifts they brought, also revealing that the “aloneness” of a woman—not necessarily her married state—often classified her as a source of disorder. The second part then concerns the magistrates’ remedy to the problems of sexual impurity and poverty—the Refuge asylum (est. 1640). The institution’s...