medieval sex work – Going Medieval

On putting sex work on the map

I have written before about the Agas Map of London (which you can find a fun zoomable version of here!) and how we can use it to find ordinary people and think about how medieval and early modern people thought about the world around them. Today, however, I have been thinking once again about how these same maps either show or hide sex work from us.

On the Agas map of London, medieval and early modern cities, and life

Because I am an historian and can do stuff like this and call it work, I spent several hours yesterday playing with this incredible zoomable version of the Agas map of Early Modern London. If you just went over there and played with that and didn’t read the rest of this post I would make peace with it eventually. But why not do both?

Now that you are aware that this map exist, if you are still here first – thanks! Second, there are hundreds of reasons why this map is so amazing, but today we are going to talk about how it offers us a rare glimpse into everyday life in Early Modern London.