At the interrogation, Rykener described being first dressed as a woman at the Bishopsgate house of one Elizabeth Brouderer. Following the 1348–1349 outbreak of bubonic plague—which killed between one quarter and one half of the English population—female apprenticeships had become as common as those for boys, particularly in London. Here Rykener was taught how to sleep with men as a woman and to be paid for doing so, as well as embroidery, and may have completed an apprenticeship under Brouderer, as female apprentices did. Rykener described the situation in some detail: