Prostitution in Poland

Prostitution in Poland is legal, but operating brothels or other forms of pimping or coercive prostitution and prostitution of minors are prohibited. The travelling prostitute is recorded in the tenth century. Dozens of brothels thrived on the outskirts of central Warsaw since its establishment as the national capital in the sixteenth century, as in other large Polish cities and towns. These cities established municipal brothels and taxed both prostitutes and brothel keepers. The first recorded brothel (Dom publiczny - literally public house) in Poland is considered to be in Bochnia in the 15th century, which catered to merchants who came to buy salt from the mines there. A Hungarian explorer to Poland in the early seventeenth century, Márton Szepsi Csombor, wrote that when he passed through Lipnica Murowana they were "surrounded by a swarm of unclean maidens to flatter and compliment us and play and sing". In Bochnia the city authorities from time to time passed ordinances against "harlots and loose people". In 1610 the mayor and town councillors appointed fines, and an ordinance from 1743 called for severe punishment for adultery. The trade guilds demanded a proper "moral" life of its members, one of the articles of the butcher's guild set a payment of 12 cents into a box for "debauchery or starting a conversation with a married woman". From the fifteenth century, police inspected brothels and removed women thought to be infected. The sixteenth-century saw the establishment of venereal disease hospitals such as St. Sebastian's in Krakow in 1528 and St. Lazarus, in Warsaw. During the period of Polish Partition (1795–1918) prostitution flourished openly, whereas previously (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) (1648–1795) it had been confined to brothels and back streets near army garrisons. The official position of the occupying Russian authorities was that prostitution was a "necessary evil" (zło konieczne), and reflected the administration of prostitution in Russia. The administration was the responsibility of the police under the Ministry of the Interior.