* Kadeshah = prostitute in Biblical Hebrew.
There are over a hundred churches in Paris, and quite a few of them, including the most famous ( Notre Dame de Paris ), are named Notre Dame after the mother of Jesus. Today I would like to talk about one of the lesser-known churches that bears this name and tell the story of the women associated with this church.
The Story of Notre Dame de Lourdes
Notre-Dame de Lorette, located in the 9th arrondissement, was built between 1823 and 1836 on the ruins of a previous church that was destroyed during the French Revolution. It is a neoclassical church that is somewhat reminiscent of the much more famous Madeleine Church . Like many churches in Paris, its appearance inside and out is pleasing to the eye, but there is no special work of art there, which makes it a must-see for the average tourist in Paris. So why am I writing about it anyway? For two main reasons. The first reason is the panorama, which is amazing in my opinion, that this church creates with the Sacre Coeur Church on the top of Montmartre, which can be seen from Rue Lafitte. The second is the fact that this church gave its name to one of the phenomena that are so characteristic of Paris – “the working girls.”
The hierarchy of prostitution in Paris
France , as we know, is a very hierarchical country, so everything there is cataloged, ordered, and ranked. The Parisian sex industry is no exception, and prostitutes there have also been divided into several groups throughout history. The lowest level of “working girls” were called Grisettes, after the gray dresses they wore. These were women who worked in jobs where they received very low wages (for example, flower weavers) and in order to “supplement their income” they had to take “lovers” who paid for each visit to them. Despite these visits, the Grisettes lived almost their entire lives in abject poverty, and their only way out of it was to “rise in rank” and become Lorrettes.
The Lorette was a woman with a lover, who rented her a small apartment and gave her a living allowance. Many of these apartments were located near the Notre Dame de Lorette church, which is how these women got their name. The Lorettes lived a relatively comfortable life, as long as they had a lover, and in order to “not keep all their eggs in one basket” (literally), they sometimes took on several clients. The Lorettes could be found during the 19th century hunting for their prey at the many balls held in Paris, to which any well-dressed person could enter. The dream of every Lorette was to capture the attention of a nobleman or a millionaire during the ball and become a courtesan.
Courtesans have a rich history that dates back to Renaissance Italy. They were high-class prostitutes who provided their lovers with much more than just a beautiful body. They were educated and witty women who became a part, if not an integral part, of the high society of their time. Examples of famous courtesans are Ninon de Lanclos from the 17th century, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry from the 18th century, and Marie du Plessis from the 19th century, whose short life story inspired Alexandre Dumas, the younger, to write “Lady of the Camellias,” which later became the opera “La Troyata.” Each of these women and others not mentioned here had a fascinating life story, which is too short to describe here. However, what they all had in common was the great wealth they were able to extract from their famous lovers. For example, Cora Pearl, one of the most famous courtesans in Paris during the reign of Napoleon III, was able to extract many millions of francs from her lovers and even built herself a palace, which during the Franco-Prussian War was turned into a hospital where French soldiers wounded in battle were treated.
The luxurious brothels of the City of Lights
The working girls could be found not only in dark alleys, ballrooms and palaces but also in brothels, some of them very luxurious. One of the most famous brothels was called le Chabanais after the street where it was located between 1878 and 1946. It was one of the most luxurious brothels, with each room built in a different style (for example, a Japanese-style room or an Arabic-style room, which Guy de Maupassant loved so much that he decided to build a replica of that room in his house by the sea). From its inception until its closure, the place attracted the fat and the ugly of Europe, with the most famous guest being the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. The Prince of Wales, who was already a rather thin man in his youth, even went so far as to invent a special chair that would allow him to give and receive oral sex to two women at the same time without having to make an effort (a replica of this chair was displayed at the Erotic Museum in Pigalle, which closed in 2016). The more luxurious and less luxurious brothels were closed by the French government in 1946 and the working girls moved to work elsewhere (for example, Rue Saint-Denis).
Since these brothels contained quite a bit of luxurious furniture and other items, they were sold to the highest bidder at auctions, which were held upon closure. Which leads me to a little joke:
Madame Dupont's daughter asked her mother for a talking parrot for her birthday. After much searching, she found such a parrot in a thrift store in central Paris. Although talking parrots are usually sold for a high price, the seller was willing to sell the parrot for a very low price. When asked to explain the low price, the seller said that the parrot had lived in one of the luxurious brothels in Paris before it closed in 1946, and as a result had picked up quite a few obscene words that he sometimes uttered.
The mother, who was so happy to be able to buy a talking parrot at such a price, decided to ignore the seller’s warning and take the parrot with her anyway. As soon as she got home and took the cover off the cage, the parrot began to scream “You old, wrinkled whore,” but the woman decided to simply ignore it and hope it would pass. In the afternoon, the daughter came home and was happy to discover the parrot, who greeted her with the words “Young whore, where have you been all this time? The customers are waiting!”
Despite this, the mother and her daughter decided to leave the beautiful parrot in the living room and start preparing for dinner. At seven in the evening, the father just returned home and as soon as he crossed the threshold, the parrot immediately began to squeal, “Mr. Dupont, are they coming now?!”….
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