The Sexual History of London (15 page)
Read The Sexual History of London Online
Authors: Catharine Arnold
With such a clientele at her coffee house, Moll King sailed pretty close to the wind. While not in effect a brothel, Moll King's was a meeting place for Covent Garden's bawdiest, such as Mother Needham and Mother Whyburn. In 1737 Moll and her husband Tom were charged with keeping a disorderly house but released on bail. A âdisorderly house', unlike a brothel, only merited a fine. But scenes such as the following did not help matters: âyou might see grave looking men half mizzy-eyed eying askance a poor supperless Strumpet asleep on a Bench, her ragged Handkerchief fallen, exposing her bare Bosom on which these old Lechers were doating. This was the Long Room.'
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Despite the success of their venture, Tom King had drunk himself to death by 1739, after which Moll King's became even more notorious, the haunt of the most outrageous and intemperate people from every walk of life; noblemen would appear in court dress with swords and richly brocaded coats and mix with chimney sweeps, gardeners and market traders. Widowhood altered Moll's personality, and her sweet, tolerant attitude to life disappeared for ever, to be replaced by a simmering rage which earned her the nickname of âThe Virago'. Moll's grasp of her affairs vanished along with her good temper and, charged again in 1739 with keeping a disorderly house, she was unable to put up bail and spent three months in Newgate gaol, although she had a reasonably comfortable time of it owing to her ability to bribe her jailers and receive distinguished visitors. Moll eventually retired to a villa in Hampstead, where she died peacefully in her sleep, leaving a considerable fortune. Much missed, she was commemorated in a broadsheet entitled âCovent Garden in Mourning' and remembered with affection for a generation.
The Bedford Head was another famous coffee house, âcrowded every Night with Men of Parts, Politicos, Scholars & Wits',
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who mixed with the stars and the low-lifes and the whores, decked out in their flamboyant clothes. The most outrageous coffee house was Weatherby's, which attracted ârakes, gamesters, swindlers, highwaymen, pickpockets and whores'. According to the diarist William Hickey, Weatherby's was âabsolute hell on earth'; on his first visit, with friends and âbrimfull of wine', he observed with horror that:
the whole room was in an uproar, men and women promiscuously mounted upon chairs, tables and benches, in order to see a sort of general conflict carried on upon the floor. Two she devils, for they scarce had a human appearance, were engaged in a scratching and boxing match, their faces entirely covered with blood, bosoms bare, and clothes nearly torn from their bodies. For several minutes not a creature interfered between them, or seemed to care a straw what mischief they might do each other, and the contest went on with unabated fury.
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Tea gardens or pleasure gardens also offered opportunities for all sorts of frivolity, with a blind eye turned to bad behaviour. Designed to entice Londoners and visitors alike âto linger beyond the calls of business soaking up the atmosphere of urbane and civilised living',
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there were in the order of 200 pleasure gardens around London, celebrated for their fishponds, fireworks, musicians and masquerades. Famous pleasure gardens included Sadlers' Wells, Kilburn Wells, Bermondsey Spa, Hockley in the Hole (Clerkenwell), Pimlico, Lambeth Wells and Vauxhall Gardens. Shady Vauxhall with its secluded arbours was particularly louche; even Samuel Pepys was shocked by the behaviour he witnessed there. On 27 July 1688, he noted: âOver the water with my wife and Deb and Mercerâ¦and eat there and walked; and observed how coarse some young gallants from the town were. They go into the arbours where is no man and ravish the woman there, and the audacity of vice in our time much enraged me.'
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According to the historian of prostitution Fernando Henriques, âthose who purposely lost their way in the bushes did not bother to be discreet and made a tremendous uproar, no doubt added to by the screams of respectable women being raped'.
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The attractions of Ranelagh Gardens in Chelsea, opened in 1742, included grottoes, fishing, cream teas, skittle alleys, fountains and formal walks, spa waters and even bear-baiting. The gardens were described by the rakish novelist Tobias Smollet as being like âthe enchanted palace of a genie, adorned with the most exquisite performance of painting, carving, and gilding, enlightened with a thousand golden lamps, that emulate the noon-day sun; crowded with the great, the rich, the gay, the happy, and the fair; glittering with cloth of gold and silver, lace, embroidery, and precious stones'.
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The main attraction was a rotunda with an orchestra in the centre and tiers of boxes all round. The wit Horace Walpole declared: âevery night I constantly go to Ranelagh, which has totally beat Vauxhall'.
At âEnglish Castle' in Clerkenwell, visitors were promised a grand garden, golden and silver fish, an enchanted fountain and even a rainbow â and all for sixpence! At Lambeth Wells, one of the attractions was all-night music, resulting in the garden losing its licence in 1755 due to complaints by disgruntled residents and a series of drunken brawls. Inevitably, pleasure gardens became famous for pleasure of another kind. Cupid's Gardens in Lambeth were celebrated for their âerotic ambience', and the proprietor of the âTemple of Flora' received a prison sentence in 1796 for keeping a disorderly house. Spring Gardens, later known as Vauxhall, opened in 1660, and could be reached only by boat at its location on the South Bank, adding to the romantic ambience. Vauxhall was one of the most famous pleasure gardens, where, for just a shilling, the visitors could enjoy orchestras, dazzling firework displays, dancing and the opportunity to indulge in a little flirtation in the decorated alcoves set aside for just such a purpose. In 1749, a hundred musicians entertained an audience of 12,000, causing traffic jams as far away as London Bridge.
Back in the Garden, another development was taking place: the return of the bath house, or âbagnio'. These bath houses were expensive, exclusive and devoted to anything but getting clean. The legendary Casanova tells us that during a trip to London he âvisited the bagnios, where a rich man can sup, bathe and sleep with a fashionable courtesan, of which species there are many in London. It makes a magnificent debauch, and only costs six guineas.'
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The German historian Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz (1741â1812) provides a vividly detailed account:
In London there is a certain kind of house, called bagnios, which are supposed to be baths; their real purpose, however, is to provide persons of both sexes with pleasure. These houses are well, and often richly furnished, and every device for exciting the senses is either at hand or can be provided. Girls do not live here, but they are fetched in sedan chairs when required. None but those who are specially attractive in all ways are so honoured, and for this reason they often send their address to a hundred of these bagnios in order to make themselves known. A girl who is sent for and does not please receives no gratuity, the chair alone being paid for. The English retain their solemnity even as regards their pleasures, and consequently the business of such a house is conducted with a seriousness and propriety which is hard to credit. All noise and uproar is banned here; no loud footsteps are heard, every corner is carpeted and the numerous attendants speak quietly among themselvesâ¦In every bagnio there is found a formula regarding baths, but they are seldom needed. These pleasures are very expensive, but in spite of this many houses of the kind are full every night. Most of them are quite close to the theatres, and many taverns are in the same neighbourhood.
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James Boswell, biographer of Samuel Johnson, was one of the most famous enthusiasts of London low life. He expressed unabashed admiration for women such as âthe civil nymph with white-thread stockings who tramps along the Strand and who will resign her engaging person to your honour for a pint of wine and a shilling'.
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A diary entry for 25 March 1763 reads:
As I was coming home this night, I felt carnal inclinations raging through my frame. I determined to gratify them. I went to St James Park and picked up a whore. For the first time did I engage in armour [a condom] which I found but a dull satisfaction. She who submitted to my lusty embraces was a young Shropshire girl, only 17, very well-looked, her name Elizabeth Parker. Poor being, she has a sad time of it!
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But he does not feel sorry for Elizabeth Parker for long. A few days later, on 31 March, he âstrolled into the park and took the first whore I met, whom I without many words copulated with free from danger, being safely sheathed. She was ugly and lean and her breath smelt of spirits. I never asked her name. When it was done, she slunk off. I had a low opinion of this gross practice and resolved to do it no more.'
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That didn't last long, either. On 17 May, Boswell picked up a girl called Alice Gibbs at the bottom of Downing Street and repaired to a shady spot down a lane, where he produced his âarmour'. Alice begged him not to put it on, âas the sport was much pleasanter without it, and as she was quite safe'. On one famous occasion Boswell even had sex with a strong jolly young damsel on Westminster Bridge, and found âthe whim of doing it there with the Thames rolling below us amused me much'.
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Despite his familiar use of prostitutes, Boswell was as vain and naive as the next punter. He recalls one girl, picked up on the Strand on 25 November 1762, who âwondered at my size and said that if I ever took a girl's maidenhood, I would make her squeak'.
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Boswell, like so many men, had obviously not realized that this is a stock line, a piece of harmless flattery intended to raise the spirits of all clients.
While Boswell was slumming it with pick-ups in St James's Park, the luxury market had established itself at the fashionable end of town, close to the royal palaces of St James's, the mansions of Mayfair, and of course the Houses of Parliament at Westminster. Further north, in Marylebone, the first generation of middle-class mistresses was being established. These women were the sexual carriage trade, catering to the higher echelons of society, attractive and accomplished girls from good families who had exchanged a life of genteel poverty for becoming the established companion of a regular, wealthy client. According to one commentator,
In the parish of Mary-le-bone only, which is the largest and best peopled in the capital, thirty thousand Ladies of Pleasure reside, of which seventeen hundred are reckoned to be housekeepers [homeowners]. These live very well, and without ever being disturbed by the magistrates. They are indeed so much their own mistress, that if a justice of the peace attempted to trouble them in their apartments, they might turn him out of doors; for as they pay the same taxes as the other parishioners, they are consequently entitled to the same privileges.
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It is this ideal position of âmistress' that the fictional Fanny Hill briefly achieves in her celebrated
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
, and Moll Hackabout experiences equally briefly in Hogarth's satirical cartoon sequence,
The Harlot's Progress
. These girls were at the top of their game, and, if shrewd and pragmatic enough to retain their lovers' support and resist the urge to follow their hearts, they were as safely established as wives. Indeed, they had more security than wives, who at the time had no financial claim over their husbands.
One step down the scale from the mistresses were the âseraglios' or high-class brothels of St James's and Soho. These were modelled on French âhouses' which were characterized by a âseraglio', or great salon, in which the girls sat around in a state of
déshabillé
, ready to advertise their services to prospective clients by striking dramatic poses. The girls had been trained in all aspects of the trade, allowing the seraglios to cater for all varieties of sexual deviation, from pornography and âslaves' who could arouse the latent passions of the older man to a peep-room for voyeurs, and even a âchamber of horrors' for sado-masochists. That epithet might have taken another two centuries to develop, but the pragmatic, worldly-wise bawds were familiar enough with those who equated pain with pleasure. One Mrs Goadsby, a frequent visitor to Paris, was mightily impressed by the French seraglios and opened her own âhouse' in Berwick Street, Soho, in 1750, catering to all tastes at the most exclusive prices.
Another bawd, Miss Fawkland, actually trained her whores rigorously before they were allowed to work at one of her three adjoining houses in St James's Street, decked out as âtemples'. The first was the âTemple of Aurora', which specialized in very young girls, aged between eleven and sixteen, who were, disturbingly, handpicked from crowds of little girls brought to Miss Fawkland by their parents.
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Here, elderly clients were permitted to fondle and slobber over the trainee whores, but officially go no further. After their training, the girls graduated to the âTemple of Flora', which operated as a conventional luxury brothel, while the third house, or âTemple of Mysteries', concentrated on more outlandish tastes and the sado-masochistic practices so popular with the upper classes.
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As one might have predicted, Miss Fawkland's establishments were highly successful, and her clientele was drawn from the highest in the land, including as it did Lords Cornwallis, Buckingham, Hamilton and Bolingbroke, and the writers Sheridan and Smollet.
Mrs Charlotte Hayes's establishment, meanwhile, offered an entertaining line in theatrical reconstructions. Having heard that Captain Cook had just discovered Tahiti, and reported that their handsome young men and lovely maidens copulated in public, Charlotte invited favoured clients to a âTahitian Feast of Venus' which would start at seven prompt, when âtwelve beautiful spotless nymphs all virgins will carry out the Feast of Venus as it is celebrated in Oteite' [Tahiti]. Charlotte would play Queen Oberea, and the maidens would be aged eleven and over. An additional attraction would be tableaux based on the drawings of the Renaissance pornographer Pietro Aretino, and twelve attractive young men had been hired to flank the aforesaid maidens. Twenty-three gentlemen âof the highest breeding' including five MPs arrived punctually. The proceedings opened with each youth presenting his nymph with a dildo wreathed in flowers, after which they copulated enthusiastically, accompanied by appropriate music, until the spectators were so overcome with excitement that they invaded the floor and joined in. This âCyprian Feast' (âCyprian' alluded to Cyprus, island of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love) lasted for two hours, after which everyone sat down to a hearty supper. Charlotte never repeated this particular event, but it was much copied by other bawds.
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