In the sixteenth century the law required that an immodest woman belonging to any reputable family should be publicly shorn of her hair, and condemned to wear a linen veil; nor was any distinction made between unmarried women and widows against whom the offense was proved. About the same period the trade guilds enacted stringent laws prohibiting the admission of improper characters to their public festivals, and restraining their members from marrying women of that class. To attain this end, any master tradesman who designed to marry was compelled to introduce his intended bride at a meeting of the company, that all might be convinced of her discreet character and conduct, and any who married without observing this requirement were expelled the association. The guilds inflicted the same penalties on any of their members who had intercourse with improper characters, or who seduced a virtuous woman and subsequently married her. A certain recognition of the existence of public women may be traced throughout these regulations, which appear to have admitted the necessity from regard to the rigorously enforced sanctity of the domestic circle, but, at the same time, endeavored to prevent the increase of immorality by attaching odium to its followers. Again, turning to the pages of Fiducin, we find that, "in all the great towns of the German Empire, the public protection of women of pleasure (_lust dirnen_) seems to have been a regular thing," in proof of which he says, "Did a creditor, in taking proceedings against his debtor, find it necessary to put up at an inn, one of the allowed items of his expenditure was a reasonable sum for the company of a woman during his stay (_frauen geld_)." This was a question of state etiquette in Berlin in 1410, a sum having been officially expended in that year to retain some handsome women to grace a public festival and banquet given to a distinguished guest, Diedrich V. Quitzow, whose good-will the citizens desired to cultivate. During this period of toleration the expediency of controlling public women was unquestioned; but the first Berlin enactment of material importance to this investigation bears date in 1700, and is remarkable as clearly enunciating the principles which have been adhered to, with only a short interval, ever since. The first section declares, "By law this traffic is decidedly not permitted (_erlaubt_), but simply tolerated (_geduldet_) as a necessary evil." Sections 2, 3, and 4 require the keeper of any house of prostitution to give notice to the commissary of the quarter when any of his women leave him, or when he receives a new one, and restrain him from keeping more women than are specified in his contract.