“Houses of Ill Fame” in Dubrovnik – the history of Dubrovnik’s public brothels in the 19th and 20th centuries

Abstract

The existence of marginal social groups and phenomena, particularly public prostitution in Dubrovnik in the 19th and 20th centuries, was almost never the subject of systematic historical research. With the adoption of the new Penal Code on Crimes, Offenses and Misdemeanors in the Habsburg Monarchy in 1852, a new era of the regulation of prostitution began in Croatian regions, based on the principles of legal regulation. With it, prostitution came to be tolerated as a trade if certain legal conditions were met. This practice continued in the newly created South Slavic state until the adoption of the Act on the Suppression of Venereal Diseases, which abolished prostitution in the entire state in 1934, which until then had been allowed in two forms: the institution of a public brothel and individual publicly tolerated prostitution. Public brothels, as venues of mandatory regular health and police supervision, have appeared in Dubrovnik since the 1890s. The reasons for their opening were primarily related to the public health control of public brothels, primarily because of local people, especially young people whose infection with syphilis or another venereal disease was becoming both a public health and a moral issue. Nevertheless, it seems that the decisive reason for the approval of the municipal concessions for running a tolerated public brothel was the arrival of members of the Home Guard from the Dubrovnik and Kotor regions to the newly built Home Guard Barracks in Gruž. The municipal administration recognized this as a potential source of the spread of venereal diseases because the number of soldiers, as the most frequent customers, reached about 12% of the total population of Dubrovnik at the beginning of the 20th century. Sources record several smaller brothels in Dubrovnik with one to three prostitutes, who were reported to the police and health services and practiced their trade in private homes. On the other hand, Dubrovnik also had a public brothel in the full sense of the word. This business was run professionally, and in addition to offering rooms for accommodation and running the prostitution trade, it also offered waiting staff and an accompanying catering offering. This public brothel was opened in 1897 and operated until 1932, when it moved to a new location, operating until it closed in October of 1934. Observing the sequence of owners and managers throughout the thirty-six years of the brothel’s existence, it is evident that all of them were – Jews. After World War I, big cities like Zagreb, Belgrade or Sarajevo closed public brothels, allowing only publicly tolerated prostitutes. However, this was not the case in Dubrovnik, because the frequent arrivals of foreign navies and the increasing fluctuation of foreign and domestic visitors apparently did not allow the local authorities to finally close the brothel. After a series of unsuccessful attempts to find an alternative location, which were stopped mainly by citizens’ petitions, the municipality and the owners partially solved the problem by selling the house and moving the brothel to a nearby neighborhood. Ultimately, however, even this brothel was closed with the final ban on public prostitution when the regulation of prostitution of the Belle Époque was replaced by that of strict prohibition.