Prostitution in Poland is legal, but operating brothels or other forms of pimping or coercive prostitution and prostitution of minors are prohibited. The travelling prostitute is recorded in the tenth century. Dozens of brothels thrived on the outskirts of central Warsaw since its establishment as the national capital in the sixteenth century, as in other large Polish cities and towns. These cities established municipal brothels and taxed both prostitutes and brothel keepers.
The first recorded brothel Dom publiczny - literally public house in Poland is considered to be in Bochnia in the 15th century, which catered to merchants who came to buy salt from the mines there. In Bochnia the city authorities from time to time passed ordinances against "harlots and loose people". In the mayor and town councillors appointed fines, and an ordinance from called for severe punishment for adultery.
The trade guilds demanded a proper "moral" life of its members, one of the articles of the butcher's guild set a payment of 12 cents into a box for "debauchery or starting a conversation with a married woman". From the fifteenth century, police inspected brothels and removed women thought to be infected. The sixteenth century saw the establishment of venereal disease hospitals such as St.
Lazarus, in Warsaw. During the period of Polish Partition β prostitution flourished openly, whereas previously Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth β it had been confined to brothels and back streets near army garrisons. The administration was the responsibility of the police under the Ministry of the Interior. Local committees made of police and physicians administered the regulations. Polish garrisons had their own brothels, and as Europe progressively adopted the Napoleonic system of regulation, state-regulated prostitution became established in in Prussian and Russian Poland and in in Austrian Galicia.
In the Russian governor introduced a tax on brothels and prostitution, and 30 years later created the committees to oversee regulation. The regulations required all women in commercial sex to register and undergo regular gynecological examinations which were recorded in 'passports'. Despite this, there existed an illegal sector of women who chose not to become part of the public register.
