On the economics of prostitution in sixteenth century Rome

The 1549 tax roll listing the 436 prostitutes of Rome shows that half of them paid annual rentals of under 22 scudi and mostly lived in a single room. The remaining half, who paid from 22 to 150 scudi annually in rent, were the courtesans. The estimated annual earnings of prostitutes averaged 78 scudi, while for the courtesans alone it was 114 scudi. The correlation between the distribution of prostitutes in 1549 and the number of female headed households in the various districts in the Roman census of 1527, suggests that little had changed as regards prostitution in the intervening 22 years. Few prostitutes saved any money, so the death duty devised by the Roman church in 1520 to finance a convent for repentant prostitutes (the Convertite) was a failure.