The outlandish, the anomalous and the curious from the last five thousand years. Prostitutes have sometimes chosen to mark themselves apart, the red light at the window, and sometimes they have been obliged to mark themselves apart. This was particularly evident in medieval Europe , where the arbiters of taste would have loved to have colour-coded all society.
This was the same cookie-cutter mentality that put merchants in red died gowns and pinned yellow stars to the backs or breasts of Jewish citizens. In different cities and regions prostitutes were instructed to dress with symbols of some sort so that they could be immediately picked out. Beach has, very gently, been putting together a list of these symbols for the edification of the present age. These are drawn from several different sources.
Beaucaire: a mark on the left arm a tattoo or ink or…? See Toulouse below. Florence: gloves and bells on the head in the hair? Mantua: white cloak and badge on chest what on earth did it look like? At first glance perhaps the Florentine dress code for prostitutes was the most attractive.
But bells meant lepers in the middle ages… The prostitute was hence impure. As to the badge in Mantua, we have a record from London where a prostitute was punished by being made to wear a yellow H for harlot. Perhaps a Latinate equivalent P? Interesting how yellow and stripes are also seen as being godless.
Other prostitute signs from the Middle Ages : drbeachcombing At yahoo DOT com Invisible writes, 31 Oct Besides being a symbol of lepers, bells of a very different sort were a fashionable accessory: the so-called folly bells seen on Renaissance jester costumes.
