December
11
/ 2018
The modern Christian church does not condone prostitution and would never consider getting involved with it. However, in 12 th century England, a borough of London known as Southwark had eighteen licensed brothels with about one thousand prostitutes employed therein! All of these brothels were run by the church and brought in large sums of money for building churches and other ecclesiastical duties. Anyone for Stew? All the brothels were in Bankside, an area of Southwark, and the brothels themselves were called the “Bankside stews.” There are two theories on how the brothels came to have this name. First, the ponds on the Bishop’s land bred fish for the bishop to eat and were called “stew-ponds”. This led to the
