In Bed with the Georgians

by Rendell, Mike;

  A friend of Bob Potts he may have been; entrusted to look after Emily he most certainly was, but that did not stop Hickey enjoying her favours, or, as he himself put it ‘I passed a night that many would have given thousands to do’. He bemoaned the fact that he was convinced that she was totally void of feeling and was as cold as ice, but adds that she could neither read nor write, having been procured by Charlotte Hayes as a 12-year-old while begging for assistance for her blind father. If that is correct, then Emily must have been grateful to the old bawd for grooming her so well that she was able to set up on her own as a high class whore.

  Charlotte may have eventually married her partner Dennis O’Kelly, and certainly they continued to prosper. She put a manager in to run her premises at Number two King’s Place and took over Number five. It too became a huge success, and as a result ‘Mr and Mrs O’Kelly’ were able to run two prestigious estates, Clay Hill outside Epsom, and later Canons Park at Edgware, former home of the Duke of Chandos. The Duke of Cumberland and the Prince of Wales were regular visitors to their homes, giving them a sort of dubious respectability. Their joint assets would have made them multi-millionaires today, but incredibly Charlotte ended up in the debtors’ prison in 1798, her ‘husband’ having died thirteen years earlier. Her legacy was the way she helped transform whoring into something almost aspirational. Proudly she had walked her charges through the park, or taken them to be paraded through Brighton, Bath and Oxford to drum up new customers. Her ‘nuns’ may not have achieved respectability, but through her they attained money, status, and admiration. She looked after their health, and she helped make them what we would now term ‘celebrities’.

  * * *

  Before leaving the Madams who helped redefine harlotry, moving it upmarket and giving it glamour, it may help to try and set aside prejudices about exploitation and the commercialisation of sex. These women managed to succeed in a man’s world. They ran successful businesses at a time when women did not otherwise feature in business. They brought to those businesses taste and style and a sense of fashion. Nowadays they would perhaps be fashion designers or hosting makeover programmes on television. They were entrepreneurs who helped make the courtesan’s lifestyle aspirational. They could be ruthless, but they were successful. For the whore in a low-class brothel of course there was nothing whatsoever aspirational in their lifestyle. However, it was the Madams who introduced a new top layer to whoredom, and they deserve recognition for changing the face of society.

  Chapter Four

  Courtesans and Harlots

  The vast majority of eighteenth century sex workers lived anonymous lives, died, and were buried in unmarked graves. But a few, a very few, ascended to the heights of public celebrity. They became household names, their passing was noted and even mourned. Why? Not, one suspects, because they were any more adept at their trade than others, nor that they were necessarily more attractive. But they generally had that little extra something – style, chutzpah, call it what you will, that distinguished them from their ‘Cyprian sisters’. A brief look at a handful of these stars of their profession reveals much about public attitudes towards paid sex.

  FANNY MURRAY, 1729–1778

  Fanny had an unpromising start in life – she was born in Bath around 1729 to the wife of an itinerant musician called Rudman. Both parents were dead by the time she was 12 and she eked a living as a flower-seller on the streets of Bath near the Abbey and outside the Assembly Rooms. She was an attractive young girl and unfortunately she caught the eye of a philanderer called Jack Spencer. He was noble-born – the grandson of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough – and no doubt he saw the seduction of a 12-year-old orphan as a bit of fun. He had his wicked way with her, and promptly left. His place was taken by a Captain in the army called Ned Harvey, but he too deserted her, leaving her at the mercy of all the unscrupulous rakes and pimps about town. Enter a rather strange hero – none other than the ageing roué Beau Nash, for long known as ‘the King of Bath’ by virtue of being the Master of Ceremonies at the Assembly Rooms. No matter that at 66 he was over fifty years her senior – he invited her to become his mistress and for a couple of years she was his devoted help-mate. He helped her acquire a veneer of good manners, but without crushing her sparkle and sense of fun. He showered her with clothes and presents, and enjoyed showing her off to his friends. As she grew up she became even more of a beauty, and reports speak of her dimpled cheeks, her perfect white teeth, her coral lips and her chestnut-brown hair. Just as importantly, she was also growing more curvaceous by the day. But the odd couple were never likely to stay together for long and, after two years, she left Nash, and Bath, and headed for London.

  She became a ‘dress-lodger’, which meant that she was under the control of a bawd. She would have been supplied with fine clothes, in return for something which many whores, before and since, found to be a life of servitude. In general, they were never able to repay the extortionate charges for their clothing. But Fanny was different and somehow managed to pay off her debts, escape from the brothel, and acquire lodgings of her own.

  It was there that she came to the notice of Jack Harris (as in ‘Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies’ – see Chapter Two). Harris had been building up a hand-written list of girls-about-town, and he was happy to include young Fanny, describing her as ‘a new face…. Perfectly sound in wind and limb. A fine Brown girl, rising nineteen next season. A good side-box piece, she will show well in the Flesh Market’, and commending her as ‘fit for high keeping with a Jew merchant…. If she keeps out of the Lock she may make her fortune and Ruin half the Men in Town’.

  She rocketed to fame and by the end of her teens was widely acknowledged as the ‘Toast of the Town’, so much so that she is widely credited as being the inspiration for Fanny Hill, the central character in John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure published in 1749. Her impressive physique was noted in songs which were composed by the bucket-load throughout the 1750s. One such included the lines:

  What paint with her Complexion vies

  What jewels sparkle like her Eyes

  What Hills of Snow so white as Rise

  The Breasts of Fanny Murray?

  She became an arbiter of fashion – the person everyone else wanted to copy. If she wore her broad-brimmed cap crooked, everyone wanted to do the same and it became known as the Fanny Murray cap. As an article in The Centinel of 30 July 1757 put it:

  If Fanny Murray chuses to vary the fashion of her apparel, immediately every Lucretia in town takes notice of the change, and modestly copies the chaste original. If Fanny shews the coral centre of her snowy orbs—miss, to outstrip her, orders the stays to be cut an inch or two lower; and kindly displays the whole lovely circumference.

  Race horses, ships and even cocktail drinks were named after her. Prints made her a national pin-up, and Fanny-mania was no different to today’s preoccupation with television reality stars such as the Kardashian sisters. She had become the mistress of John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich. He had her nude portrait painted, and later hung it in his hall alongside the naked charms of Kitty Fisher, who was to succeed Fanny as toast of the town and lover of the Fourth Earl. He introduced her to fellow members of the Hellfire Club, established by Sir Francis Dashwood and originally based in the George and Vulture public house. Subsequently the club met at Medmenham Abbey, where Fanny would take part in orgies in her capacity as a ‘nun’, which was the term given to females attending the club. Her name was associated with a host of other well-known and well-heeled young men, including barristers, soldiers, politicians and apparently even members of the royal family. Eventually she fell for the charms of a wealthy young baronet called Sir Richard Atkins, a tall gangling individual nick-named ‘Supple Dick’ by the actor Sam Foote. She was living with him by 1748, but she constantly complained of his parsimony and of his failure to indulge her with the sort of gifts which he showered on his other lady-friends. The often-told story of the bank-note sandwich has been attributed
to various other courtesans, but in all probability started with Fanny, who allegedly felt insulted when Sir Richard gave her a twenty pound note. She stuffed it between two slices of buttered bread and ate it. According to Horace Walpole, who always appears to have been on hand to record a bon mot, she derided Sir Richard, shouting out ‘Damn your twenty pounds, what does that signify?’

  Her on-off relationship with the baronet continued, but not at the expense of her liaisons with numerous other men-about-town, including the beau Robert ‘Handsome’ Tracey, the highway robber John Maclean, and a man prone to repeated outbreaks of bigamy by the name of Captain Plaistow. In 1756 Sir Richard persuaded Fanny to accompany him and his friends on a yacht trip to the Mediterranean, but he caught a fever and died before the voyage got under way, leaving Fanny, at 27 years of age, in dire straits. Her youthful good looks were fading, her creditors were pushing for payment and her gallants deserted her in her hour of need. She was carted off to the sponging house (a temporary holding place for debtors) and her inevitable downward spiral into poverty and degradation must have been staring her in the face. But fortune favours the brave, and she decided to pen a letter to the son of the man who had first debauched her. Unlike his late father, this Mr Spencer was exceedingly honourable and generous, settling an annuity of £200 on Fanny. He also did her the great favour of introducing her to a friend of his, an actor called David Ross. The two fell in love, and to the amazement of everyone, got married. Fanny really had turned over a new leaf and appears to have remained a faithful and devoted wife throughout their marriage.

  It cannot have been easy for Mr Ross as there were constant reminders of his wife’s notorious past. In 1758 the Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Fanny Murray was published, purportedly being her autobiography and raking up many details of her highly promiscuous past. It is unlikely that she actually wrote the book herself but it is memorable for being one of the very first ‘kiss and tell’ whore’s memoirs. Worse was to follow when, in 1763, her name cropped up in connection with the trial of John Wilkes. His Essay on Woman was, after all, dedicated to her, and began with the words ‘Awake, my Fanny…’. As mentioned later, salacious extracts were read out before the shocked Houses of Parliament, and the press immediately began raking over stories about the woman who had inspired such scandalous and blasphemous verses.

  She made one further triumphant appearance in public, when she was one of the belles of the ball at a masquerade held in October 1767 in honour of a visit by the King of Denmark. She attended the ball as ‘Night’, in a costume which the Gentleman’s Magazine stated was ‘of thin black silk studded with silver stars, and fastened to the head with a moon very happily executed’. She was one of the ladies pictured arriving at the ball in a barge at the riverside entrance to The Mansion House. Simple, but sensational, she was noticed by everyone.

  She died, aged 49, on April Fools’ Day 1778 at her home just off The Strand. She had been married for twenty blameless years, but will forever be remembered for the years of immorality which preceded them.

  NANCY PARSONS, 1735–1814

  Next on the demi-monde throne was Nancy Parsons, who was the daughter of a Bond Street tailor, and was probably born around 1735. As a teenager she appears to have been drawn to prostitution, charging clients a guinea a time, and according to one of her boasts, was able to earn 100 guineas in a week, which is quite some work-rate. She was considered beautiful, as well as shrewd, and it wasn’t long before she fell for a West Indian slave merchant called Mr Horton. She accompanied him to Jamaica, and may possibly even have married him, but when he died she returned to England and resumed her horizontal athleticism with a series of eager young men. She could claim the acquaintance of various members of the peerage and numerous politicians, including William Petty, second Earl Shelburne, but her willingness to hop from one lover’s bed to the next earned her Horace Walpole’s rebuke that she was ‘one of the commonest creatures in London, one much liked, but out of date’. Her portrait appears as Image 25.

  Her affair with Lord Grafton is mentioned in more detail in Chapter Seven. Suffice to say that after she had got used to sitting alongside the Prime Minister, she wasn’t going to go back to anyone lacking a title – or a fortune – when he chucked her over. By 1769 Nancy had moved on to John Frederick Sackville, third Duke of Dorset, accompanying him on his continental tour which commenced the following year. Given that he was not involved in politics, their affair did little to engage the interest of the general public. Horace Walpole, however, waggishly remarked that she was ‘the Duke of Grafton’s Mrs. Horton, the Duke of Dorset’s Mrs. Horton, everybody’s Mrs. Horton’. They split up in 1776 when the Duke took up with Elizabeth Armistead (see later) and Nancy moved swiftly on to Sir Charles Maynard, who had recently become the second Viscount Maynard. He was just 24 years old, whereas she was past her fortieth birthday, and no doubt keen to get a ring on her finger before age dulled her charms.

  She married her viscount in September 1776 and Walpole noted that she ‘deserved a peerage as much as many that have got them lately’. The couple went to live in Italy, and settled in Naples. But her appetite got the better of her and her particular ‘seven year itch’ involved Francis Russell, fifth Duke of Bedford. He was just 19, and joined the pair of them in a curious ménage à trois in Nice. Eventually she drifted apart from her husband – and her young lover – to lead a solo existence in Italy and then France, before dying near Paris in 1814.

  KITTY FISHER, 1738–1767

  When Nancy put down the crown as ‘Toast of the Town’, her place was taken immediately by young Kitty Fisher. She had probably been born in 1738 and, although she did not live to see her thirtieth birthday, her career burned like a shooting star. She was considered beautiful and charming, and having her portrait painted by several members of the new Royal Academy – including nine times by its President Sir Joshua Reynolds – helped seal her status as Number One ‘pin-up girl’. When Nathaniel Hone painted her (see Image 26) he showed her alongside a cat toying with a goldfish in a glass bowl. They form a rebus based on her name – the cat for Kitty, the goldfish for Fisher – while the glass bowl reflects the image of the window opposite. The reflection clearly shows figures peering in to have a look at the famous sitter. Hone was showing that Kitty was herself in a goldfish bowl, her life constantly on public view.

  Originally a milliner by trade (often a euphemism for a whore) she specialised in affairs with wealthy young men and quickly became a fashion icon. Meeting her in London in 1763 Giacomo Casanova refers to ‘… the illustrious Kitty Fisher, who was just beginning to be fashionable. She was magnificently dressed, and it is no exaggeration to say that she had on diamonds worth five hundred thousand francs.’ He was informed that he might have her then and there for ten guineas, but he declined because the girl did not speak any foreign languages. Apparently, Casanova liked to hear his ladies talk to him in French or Italian before having his wicked way with them, and on another occasion bemoaned to Lord Pembroke that the problem with the girls he met in London was that the prettiest spoke only English, adding: ‘Never mind, we shall understand each other well enough for the purpose I dare say’.

  Described as ‘the most pretty’ extravagant, wicked little whore that ever flourished’ by one commentator, Kitty’s sexual allure and brazen behaviour captivated London. In her hey-day she was charging a hundred guineas a night, and her lovers included Admiral Lord George Anson, in charge of the navy, as well as General John Ligonier, head of the British army. Then there was Edward, Duke of York, but he rather blotted his copybook by offering a paltry fifty pounds, and was promptly thrown out of bed.

  Kitty scandalized Society by having a full retinue of liveried servants – an unheardof piece of ostentation. She was a keen horsewoman, heralding a succession of whores determined to learn how to drive a coach-and-four. A Lesson Westward (Image 18) parodies this development, by showing a young prostitute being given a riding lesson, scattering a family of pigs and a pass
er-by.

  Never one to miss the equivalent of a photo-opportunity (she loved to be seen, and was a self-publicist without equal) she took to riding in Hyde Park, and in their turn the public took to coming along to watch her ride by. One day she engineered a fall in front of a group of gallant soldiers. Cue a dramatic rescue of a damsel in distress, along with much thigh on display. Exit Kitty in a smart sedan chair which just happened to be waiting nearby. The press the next day were full of stories of how Kitty was a fallen woman twice over, and hinting that her fall from the horse was nothing compared with her fall from grace. She retaliated with a letter which defended her reputation, but in doing so laid her open to mockery and ridicule. However, on the basis that all publicity is good publicity, she became even more infamous.

  Image 10 shows her displaying her charms, sprawled at the feet of the eager onlookers. Several men have quickly gathered at the scene of her misfortune as another on horseback leaps a fence exclaiming, ‘Oh my Kitty, oh my Kitty, oh my Kitty.’

  Kitty was lively, witty and extremely cheeky. This made it all the more surprising when, at the age of 28, she announced that she was marrying John Norris, a man without a title, fortune or significant talent. He was, however, infatuated with Kitty and the pair eloped to Scotland to get married, away from the possible objections from John’s father, MP for Rye. She settled at her husband’s home – now Benenden School – and became a popular local figure in the four months that Fate decreed she had left. Her husband’s wedding present to Kitty was a black mare, and she delighted in the simple pleasure of riding, apparently never missing the constant adulation and praise which had marked her recent life.

  Whether it was smallpox, or consumption, or the effect of ingesting lead from heavy make-up, her health deteriorated and her doting husband decided to take her to the Hot Wells in Bristol to ‘take the waters’ and effect a cure. She died on the journey and the heartbroken Mr Norris took her body back to Benenden and buried her in her finery, with her jewellery and her best gown. Her fame and memory lingers on, in the nursery rhyme ‘Lucy Locket’: