Den Haag
When prostitution started up in Den Haag is not known. Activity in Huygens Park was mentioned in a debate in parliament in 1911.
There are nowadays separate neighborhoods, both within walking distance from Hollands Spoor station.
Until 1999, there was a third, and larger, district: the Poeldijksestraat in the Schilderswijk. This area was closed down in 1999, and the properties demolished from January 2006.
Description from a resident
..lived in this neighborhood for over 18 years
A street that had housed families of workers on the Dutch railways. A street that later came to be full of party lights and ladies of easy virtue. A street where apart from this, for a long time families remained, because the social side of living in this neighborhood remained unchanged. A prostitution street it was to the end, only between the 1960s and now there have been a lot of changes.
Formerly hung the ladies of good character, dressed with high closed dresses, from their windows on their plush cushions with a red light next to the window. Children who played nearby were very secure. Often a candy was handed out by the ladies and every now and then if on a Sunday, an ice cream.
Poeldijksestraat with ladies on plush pillows with also the children playing
Even the children were sent to this street from streets further away because the play was safe there.
That prostitution can have something else than a negative impact on society is a fact.
When the 24 hour opening times still existed, you could do a little bit of shopping yet find everything peaceful at night. As in the 1970s and 1980s, when there were still on the station square snack bars that stayed open late into the night chicken with hot sauce (to date the best kept secret). Though it was four o'clock in the night, there was no problem with a woman being on the street because enough people were around to intervene if something happened.
Of course there are later figures, abusing the hustle and bustle of this street to carry out criminal acts. Of course, the prostitution business changed over the years and the ladies no longer sat on high plush pillows.
And it is also no longer the street where people from other streets would visit, where poverty in the sixties was huge, where you could borrow money. And it is also no longer the street where everyone, residents and their families, the lovely ladies, anyone who was present would gather round if a family was threatened with the streets because they could no longer pay the rent.
Poeldijksestraat where even ordinary people lived above the brothels
