In Bed with the Georgians

by Rendell, Mike;

  Jelly, made from animal gelatin, was renowned for its restorative properties. In addition, ‘Jelly-box’ was a slang word for the vagina. In Andrewes’ Strangers Guide for London, published in 1800, there was the advice that ‘Procuresses … are to be met with at the jelly-houses, milliners, and perfume-shops’. The book links the activities at the jelly house with those at bagnios (public) and bawdy-houses (private).

  Legitimacy: For titled families, legitimacy was all-important, both in terms of protecting their title and of ensuring that wealth was inherited within the family. If a couple married subsequent to the birth it did not legitimise the child under English law. An illegitimate child would not have a claim on his or her parent’s estate under intestacy rules. As William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England pointed out, an illegitimate child could ‘inherit nothing, being looked upon as the son of nobody … incapable even of a gift from [his or her] parents.’

  The eighteenth century saw a dramatic increase in illegitimate births – but it has to be said that if there was no money or title involved, it made very little difference to the parties. With divorce beyond the reach of ordinary families, couples often split up and went their separate ways, and never took the trouble to re-marry if they subsequently had more children. It has been suggested that illegitimate births rocketed from three per cent of all births in 1750 to around twenty per cent a hundred years later. The stigma of being an unwed mother was particularly strong – especially with those from the working classes, and this meant that many poorer women, especially household servants who perhaps had been seduced, made pregnant and then abandoned, resorted to infanticide (see earlier).

  Lesbianism: this was never a criminal offence, but was liable to arouse considerable public wrath and intolerance if openly displayed. On the other hand relationships such as that of ‘the Ladies of Llangollen’ (where Eleanor Charlotte Butler and Sarah Ponsonby lived openly together for over fifty years, shared the same sleeping arrangements and dressed in men’s clothing) were objects of curiosity. They had set up home together rather than being forced into arranged marriages and the public appears to have taken the view that, as they kept themselves to themselves and were not a public nuisance, their ‘odd behaviour’ was capable of being tolerated. Others, such as the ‘Sapphic poet’ Anna Seward published outpourings of eternal love for her enamorata, Honora Sneyd – and no-one batted an eyelid, although they lived openly together for a number of years. There are several references to what we would term lesbianism in Harris’s List (see earlier) including one for Miss Wilson of 11 Green Street, Cavendish Square who ‘frequently declares that a female bed-fellow can give more real joys than ever she experienced with the male part of the sex’. The List goes on to refer to the ‘many … pranks which she has played with her own sex in bed (where she is as lascivious as a goat) …’ In practice the word ‘lesbian’ was not in general use until the following century (named after the island of Lesbos, where the Greek poetess Sappho was born). ‘Sapphic’ and ‘tribadism’ were terms more commonly used in the eighteenth century.

  Lock Hospital: In July 1746 a philanthropist called William Bromfield started a charity to treat venereal disease. The trust acquired a house near Hyde Park Corner, and it opened as a hospital in January 1747. Before that date the ‘lock hospitals’ had specialized in the treatment of leprosy – ‘lock’ being the name for the pieces of rag or cloth used to cover the lesions and sores exhibited by the leprosy patients, from the old French word ‘locque’. It did not derive from the practice of locking the patients away and out of the public gaze. The hospital treated over 300 patients in its first year and even though it turned out that the treatment (mercury) was as bad as, if not worse than, the disease, it was at least a first step in trying to treat an epidemic which swept through all classes of London society. Patients, once discharged, were not eligible to be readmitted as it was assumed that any re-infection was evidence that the patient had not mended his or her ways.

  Forty years later it was decided that a refuge should be opened, exclusively for fallen women who had been treated at the Lock Hospital. ‘The Lock Asylum for the Reception of Penitent Female Patients’ (also known as ‘the Lock Rescue Home’) opened in 1792 at 5-6 Osnaburg Row and was moved to Knightsbridge in 1812. There, repentant females were taught needlework and other domestic skills to enable them to find ‘suitable’ paid employment.

  Magdalen Hospitals: The first Magdalen Hospital for the Reception of Penitent Prostitutes, to give it its full title, was founded in late 1758 in London’s Whitechapel. Women who had ‘fallen’ i.e. prostitutes, were given menial chores such as doing laundry and mending clothing. The women had to be under thirty, and priority was given to younger women and those who had been ‘on the game’ the shortest time. Above all, they had to have repented and exhibited a desire to mend their ways. Religious services were held twice a day, and were compulsory. In 1772 the institution moved to new premises at Blackfriars Road, St George’s Fields, and was renamed the Magdalen Hospital. In time the movement spread worldwide, and was still active in some countries into the twentieth century.

  Masquerades: The second half of the Georgian period saw a huge popularity for masked balls or masquerades – whether at fashionable places like The Pantheon, or The Rotunda at Ranelagh Gardens, or at private houses. Horace Walpole, writing to Sir Horace Mann on 18 February 1782, complained:

  I write to you more tired, and with more headache, than anyone but you could conceive! I came home at five this morning from the Duchess of Norfolk’s masquerade …. I must tell you how fine the masquerade of last night was. There were five hundred persons, in the greatest variety of handsome and rich dresses I ever saw, and all the jewels of London – and London has some! There were dozens of ugly Queens of Scots, of which I will only name to you the eldest Miss Shadwell! The Princess of Wales was one, covered with diamonds, but did not take off her mask: none of the Royalties did, but everybody else did.

  Walpole had attended the masquerade dressed as an old woman. Afterwards he said that he was so awkward at trying to undress unaided, that he had stood for an hour in his stays and under-petticoat before his footman came to his assistance.

  People from across the class spectrum could mix freely, and cast aside their inhibitions behind masks and exotic outfits. You could expect cross-dressing, shepherdesses, allegorical figures, clowns, harlequins and above all, well-dressed whores on the lookout for customers. Thomas Rowlandson depicts a group of harlots getting themselves ready for the fray in Dressing for a Masquerade (Image 17). One is going in male attire, another as a nun, while another wears a mask. Meanwhile, The Beauty Unmaskd reveals that not all disguises were misleading. (Image 19)

  Midwives: In previous centuries mid-wives were mostly female. Very often they were simply women who assisted in labour but without any training, and with no specialist knowledge of female anatomy. The tools of the trade were often barbaric, and with no concept of hygiene it was little surprise that there were many stillborn births. Rickets was commonplace, making giving birth difficult because of inadequate development of the pelvis.

  In general, male midwives were viewed with suspicion – from their female counterparts because they were encroaching on a traditionally female preserve, and from doctors in general because it was ‘beneath their dignity’. As late as 1827 The Lancet featured a letter from a well-known surgeon by the name of Sir Anthony Carlisle in which he describes midwifery as ‘a humiliating office’ suitable only to women. Others saw it as improper and immoral for a male to be present – that it was in some way lewd and likely to increase immorality and marital breakdown. In the 1779 pamphlet entitled Thoughts on the times: but chiefly on the profligacy of our women, and its causes, Francis Foster criticized male midwifery because it involved ‘placing the citadel of female virtue directly in the hands of the enemy.’

  Death of a mother in childbirth was common. A figure of six deaths in a thousand births has been quoted, but the mortality rate
was far higher than this if the birth took place in a hospital, because of the highly infectious nature of puerperal fever. It is also worth remembering that throughout the eighteenth century there was a one in three chance that an infant would fail to reach its second birthday.

  Greater scientific and anatomical studies brought midwifery more in line with general medicine, and books such as William Smellie’s A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Midwifery, first published in 1752, eventually helped put things on a more scientific footing.

  Molly houses: The name given in the eighteenth century to premises operating either as a gay club or tavern (where homosexual men could meet up and socialise) or as a male brothel. A ‘molly’ was the name given to an effeminate or homosexual male. The most famous molly house was Mother Clap’s, which was open for two years from 1724 to 1726 in the Holborn area of London. Her premises were raided in 1726 and three men (Gabriel Lawrence, William Griffin, and Thomas Wright) were charged with the capital offence of sodomy. They were hanged at Tyburn on 9 May 1726. The evidence at their trial suggested that thirty to forty men were in the habit of congregating at Molly Clap’s house, where beds were set out in every room. There was also a Marrying Room or Chapel, complete with double bed, where couples could take part in a form of ‘marriage ceremony’.

  Paedophilia: This was rarely noted or talked about. Throughout the eighteenth century, the age of consent for sexual relations was just twelve years. There were, however, many instances of girls, and boys, as young as eight or nine being engaged in the sex trade – and indeed of being introduced to it by a whoring mother, anxious to earn a premium from an eager customer.

  Posture Molls: Generally refused to be treated as whores – they were there to titillate and excite. The posture moll would start her act by dancing naked on a polished pewter platter set down in the middle of the room, and then lie on her back, drawing her knees up towards her chin while clasping both hands together, and then invite the men to ogle and inspect. For added frisson she would either flagellate or be beaten by the men, getting them to a point of arousal where they would then go off and take their pleasures with one of the whores of the house. A posture moll, about to begin her act, is shown by Hogarth in Plate 3 of A Rake’s Progress (see Image 20). The ogling dirty old men also appear in Thomas Rowlandson’s The Cunnyseurs shown as Image 21.

  Ranelagh Gardens: Opening in 1742 as an upmarket challenge to Vauxhall Gardens, Ranelagh was a fashionable place to see and be seen. The site in Chelsea was dominated by a Rotunda (until it was demolished in 1802), and became famous for its masked balls and musical performances such as the one by the infant Mozart in 1765. The gardens were a favourite place for prostitutes to stroll along plying their trade, with the historian Edward Gibbon commenting that Ranelagh Gardens were ‘the most convenient place for courtships of every kind – the best market we have in England’.

  Rape: Rape was a capital offence until 1841. Getting a conviction for rape meant proving that actual penetration took place – not always easy if the incident was only witnessed by the couple in question and it was ‘his word against hers’. In some cases witnesses may not have wanted to give evidence if this was likely to result in a death sentence. The Old Bailey records suggest that in many decades of the eighteenth century only five per cent of cases led to a conviction. The lesser offence of an assault with intent to rape, a misdemeanour, was therefore often alleged in cases prior to 1841.

  Sodomy: This catch-all covered either anal or oral intercourse, whether between a man and another man, a man and a woman, or a man and an animal. In all cases it was necessary to prove that both penetration and ejaculation had occurred. The crime could only be proved if there were two witnesses, and since the crime applied to both the ‘active’ and the ‘passive’ partner this often meant that if one of the parties acted as witness he could himself be open to prosecution. As a result of this difficulty, many men were prosecuted with the reduced charge of assault with sodomitical intent.

  Buggery was regarded by Blackstone as an ‘infamous crime against nature’ and ‘that horrible crime not to be mentioned among Christians’. It was a capital offence, described as being ‘the horrid sin of buggery, contrary to the order of Human Nature’. Writing in 1774 William Hickey describes the case of a Captain Jones of the Royal Artillery ‘who was taken up on a charge of having committed an offence with a boy, the apprentice and nephew of a man who kept a small toyshop in Parliament Street Westminster’. Solely on the word of the boy, the Captain was convicted and sentenced to death. Fortunately for him, the lawyer Edward Burke heard of what appeared to be a travesty of justice. Burke secured a pardon, conditional upon Jones agreeing to go into permanent exile.

  In general, the Georgians became increasingly prudish about reporting sodomy cases – the reports of the Old Bailey trials were censored after 1780. Knowing that sodomy was a capital offence, extortionists would threaten to reveal details of sodomitical acts unless money was paid, and therefore what information there is about trials is generally revealed in associated proceedings – for extortion and fraud, for instance.

  Vauxhall Gardens: Pleasure gardens, originally known as Spring Gardens, situated south of the River Thames, near the Vauxhall Bridge. They opened as Vauxhall Gardens in 1785 and became famous for their concerts, masquerades – and places for private assignations. Admission originally cost one shilling – increased in 1792 to half a crown (2/6d) and audiences of tens of thousands of people met to walk the gardens and to experience the spectacle of thousands of oil lamps being lit at the same time, by teams working in sequence throughout the gardens. In the days before electric lighting it was a sight which would have filled the onlookers with awe. However, not everything was bathed in light, and it was also a favourite place for prostitutes to engineer pick-ups, and to satisfy their clients down dark alley-ways.

  Venereal disease: As mentioned, the medical profession made no distinction between syphilis and gonorrhoea, or any other form of STD. There was a generally held view that it was a disease which could occur spontaneously in women of low morals, whereas men could only catch it from a woman who was already infected. It rather supported the view that female immorality and lewdness lay at the root of all problems… .

  The ‘cure’ was often worse than the disease, since it invariably involved the use of mercury in one form or another. Pills and ointments containing mercury could cause blindness, paralysis, skin ulcers and ‘saddle nose’ where the bridge of the nose rots away. Teeth would fall out, and there was always a risk of neurological damage.

  Dr Buchan’s Domestic Medicine, the eighteenth century handbook of medicine in the home, advised patients with the Great Pox to avoid extreme heat, spicy foods and in particular to abstain from horse-riding. As for medicines the Good Doctor says: ‘It more frequently happens, that we are able only to procure an abatement or remission of the inflammatory symptoms, so far as to make it safe to have recourse to the great antidote mercury… .’

  He continues:

  Mercury is often not at all necessary in a gonorrhoea; and when taken too early, it does mischief. It may be necessary to complete the cure, but can never be proper at the commencement of it. When bleeding, purging, and fomentations … have eased the pain, softened the pulse, relieved the heat of urine, and rendered the involuntary erections less frequent, the patient may begin to use mercury in any form that is least disagreeable to him.

  If he takes the common mercurial pill, two at night and one in the morning will be a sufficient dose at first. If calomel be thought preferable, two or three grains of it, formed into a bolus with a little of the conserve of hips, may be taken at bed-time, and the dose gradually increased to eight or ten grains. One of the most common preparations of mercury now in use is the corrosive sublimate. I have always found it one of the most safe and efficacious medicines when properly used.

  Virginity: Men were always prepared to pay more for de-flowering a virgin. Clever bawds knew ways of ‘re-virginising’ their gi
rls, or ‘re-arranging the crumpled blossom of the rose’ as it was euphemistically called.

  Women’s rights on Marriage: A women could own property in her own name up until the moment she was married, when her assets passed automatically to her husband. She was his property – and her property became his. In legal parlance she changed from being a ‘feme sole’ to a ‘feme covert’. Coverture had been introduced in England after the Norman Conquest, and meant that a married woman had virtually no legal rights whatsoever – she could not own land, nor even enter into a contract. She was not entitled to receive a wage or salary in her own right – it belonged to her husband – but she could have ‘pin money’. She was ‘covered’ i.e. protected by her husband and, in return for her assets, a wealthy woman would expect to be awarded a pension under her husband’s will.

  On her husband’s death a widow suddenly achieved full legal status. The law remained in force until the various Married Women’s Property Acts were passed in the nineteenth century.

  Chapter Three

  Of Brothels and Bagnios, Madams and Molls

  The majority of London prostitutes traded their wares in full public view – on the streets and in the parks. They operated singly or in pairs, attracting attention from passing males with a suggestive wink, a tap on the shoulder, or a tip of the fan. Having negotiated a deal it would then be consummated in the open air. Most of the encounters with street walkers recorded by the diarist James Boswell resulted in sexual activity in parks, down alleyways, or by the river (see Chapter Nine). For men wanting to move indoors, and perhaps add conversation and a drink to the encounter, there were innumerable taverns willing to make rooms available by the hour – or there were the bagnios. Originally public bath-houses, they proliferated in areas such as Covent Garden. They were not brothels in the sense that whores were not living in, but the proprietors were always willing to send out for female company. Most consisted of a series of individual rooms, where a couple could drink, take light refreshments, and add a measure of acquaintanceship before or after fornication.