John Rykener, also known as Eleanor, was a 14th-century sex worker arrested in December 1394 for performing a sex act with John Britby, a man who was a former chaplain of the St Margaret Pattens church, in London's Cheapside while wearing female attire. Although historians tentatively link Rykener to a prisoner of the same name, the only known facts of the sex worker's life come from an interrogation made by the mayor of London. Rykener was questioned on two offences: prostitution and sodomy. Prostitutes were not usually arrested in London during this period, while sodomy was an offence against morality rather than common law, and so pursued in ecclesiastical courts. There is no evidence that Rykener was prosecuted for either crime.
Rykener spoke of being introduced to sexual contact with men by Elizabeth Brouderer, a London embroideress who dressed Rykener as a woman and may have acted as procurer. According to the court transcription of this account, Rykener had sex with both men and women, including priests and nuns. Rykener spent part of summer 1394 in Oxford, working both as a prostitute and as an embroideress, and in Beaconsfield had a sexual relationship with a woman. Rykener returned to London via Burford in Oxfordshire, working there as a barmaid and continuing with sex work. On returning to London, Rykener had paid encounters near the Tower of London, just outside the city. Rykener was arrested with Britby one Sunday evening in women's clothes, and was still wearing them during the interrogation on 11 December. There, Rykener described prior sexual encounters in great detail. But it appears that no charges were ever brought against Rykener; or at least, no records have been found suggesting so. Nothing definite is known of Rykener after this interrogation; Jeremy Goldberg has tentatively identified as the same person a John Rykener imprisoned by and escaping from the Bishop of London in 1399.
Historians of social, sexual and gender history are especially interested in Rykener's case because of what it reveals about medieval views on sex and gender. Goldberg, for example, views it firmly in the context of King Richard II's quarrel with the city of London—although he has also questioned the veracity of the entire record, and posited that the case was merely a propaganda piece by city officials. Historian James A. Schultz has viewed the affair as being of greater significance to historians than more famous medieval stories such as Tristan and Iseult. Ruth Mazo Karras—who in the 1990s rediscovered the Rykener case in the City of London archives—sees it as illustrating the difficulties the law has in addressing things it cannot describe. Modern interest in John/Eleanor Rykener has not been confined to academia. Rykener has appeared as a character in at least one work of popular historical fiction, and the story has been adapted for the stage. Rykener's persistent use of women's clothing and presentation as an embroideress, prostitute, or barmaid has prompted some contemporary scholars to suggest that Rykener was a trans woman.
Background
Prostitution was tightly regulated in fourteenth-century England, and brothels—although not prostitution itself—were illegal in the City of London. City authorities tended not to prosecute individual sex workers, but focused on arresting the pimps and procuresses who lived off them. Prostitution was perceived as most dangerous to the moral fabric of society. Another sexual offence for which people could be prosecuted was sodomy, but this would generally be by the church in its own courts. Of these two sexual offences, sodomy was deemed the worse. The thirteenth-century philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas compared prostitution to a sewer controlling the flow of waste, saying that if one were to remove it, one would "fill the palace with foulness". Aquinas then expanded on the point, saying "take away prostitutes from the world and you will fill it with sodomy". Prostitution was thus seen as a necessary evil, that if not eliminated could be controlled. The Lord Mayor of London's secular court would not have been seen as competent to hear cases involving either offence.