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In 1300 AD, London had 18 brothels employing hundreds of prostitutes. These brothels were regulated, incredibly, by the Bishop of Winchester.
As the entire population of London was less 30,000 we can infer that perhaps 5-10% of the women in London at the time were prostitutes.
Prostitution was certainly a much more common career path during the Middle Ages. And life expectancy for prostitutes was very short. So I would say that, yes, many women were facing awful choices at the time. This shouldn't be surprising. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, Malthusian conditions applied more often than not. A large percentage of people, both men and women, did not get enough to eat.
...for the small minority of women who lived in London and/or other major cities. By far the most common occupation for both men and women would have been "small-scale subsistence farmer"
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Actually almost 5 million! But it would crash to under 2 million by 1450 thanks to the Black Death and its many echoes. The ones who survived the plague enjoyed much higher quality of life as Malthusian constraints were lifted.
I think you're probably right. But what a revealing statement. Things were so bad that women who might have wanted to resort to prostitution couldn't because there weren't enough clients with means to pay!
It just shows that rich men were concentrated in cities, and their extra wealth was greater than the higher cost of living of the city.
What do you find revealing about this? Is the idea that there were huge wealth disparities in the past a revelation to you?
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Isn’t this an (odd) interpretation of virtually any supply and demand curve? The only thing stopping me from stripping naked on public TV is that nobody is willing to pay me a billion dollars to do it.
We've already established what kind of person you are @you-get-an-upvote. Now we're just haggling over the price.
What a revealing statement. Things are so bad on Earth that somebody who wants to strip naked for money can’t because there aren’t enough clients to pay!
I apologize for my snark earlier.
I don't understand the objection. An affluent person doing something for $1 billion is different than a person in abject poverty doing that same thing to survive.
No worries, sorry for the snarky reply.
Yes that's true, I was just illustrating that quantity supplied increases whenever demand increases, and this isn't considered "revealing" in most circumstances. Nobody would say "aha! It's been revealed that you-get-an-upvote wants to be a stripper" or "aha! The US wants to export bananas" if demand increases enough, so I'm not sure why you're saying it about the women in 1300s London.
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More like 5-7 million.
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