London

by Peter Ackroyd

  One other commentator, on witnessing these scenes, remarked “that the maddest people in this kingdom are not in but out of Bedlam.” Here was the most curious thing: the building in Moorfields provoked irrational behaviour in its visitors as well as in its inmates, the whole scene of “wild motions” (which can be deemed to be sexual) and “hideous roarings” creating an unimaginable confusion of types and roles. Prostitutes used to linger in the galleries, looking for custom, on the principle that lustfulness might be excited by the antics of the mad. It was suggested, only half seriously, that another asylum be built to house those who came to mock and make sport of the insane. So it might seem that the contagion of madness spread from Moorfields across the whole city.

  Thus, in the literature of the period, “Bedlam” becomes a potent metaphor for all the evils of London. In Pope’s verses it casts its shadow over Grub Street, where poverty and lack of accomplishment have driven many mad. Traherne wrote that

  The World’s one Bedlam, or a greater Cave

  Of Mad-men, that do alwaies rave.

  John Locke compared temporary madness to being lost in the streets of a strange city, a suggestive analogy which was taken up by many observers of London. In Smollett’s Humphry Clinker, for example, Matt Bramble remarks of Londoners that “All is tumult and hurry; one would imagine that they were impelled by some disorder of the brain, that will not suffer them to be at rest … How can I help supposing they are actually possessed by a spirit, more absurd and pernicious than anything we meet within the precincts of Bedlam?” So the building at Moorfields rears over a city which is infected with the same disorder. The citizens of London live in a state of unnatural energy and uproar; they live in foul houses with no light or air; they are driven by the whip of business and money-making; they are surrounded by all the images of lust and violence. They are living in Bedlam.

  By the end of the eighteenth century Bethlem Hospital had acquired its own patina of decay and desolation. In 1799 a commission described it as “dreary, low and melancholy” as if the material fabric had been infected by the melancholy madness of its inhabitants. The neighbourhood was itself suffused with dreariness; the hospital was “surrounded by squalid houses” as well as a number of shops dealing in old furniture. So in 1807 it was agreed that the institution should move across the river to Southwark. The third Bedlam in London’s history rose within appropriate surroundings, since Southwark had always been the nursery of prisons and other institutions.

  The new building was as grand as its predecessor, with a portico decorated with Ionic columns and surmounted by a great dome. Yet the conditions of the interior were as sparse as before, as if once again the whole purpose of the building was a theatrical display designed to depict the triumph over lunacy in London. The two sculpted giants of madness, known popularly as “the brainless brothers,” were kept in the vestibule.

  Methods of treatment remained severe, and were largely dependent on mechanical restraint; one patient lay in chains for fourteen years. It was not until the mid-nineteenth century that a more “enlightened” policy was developed; after two inquiries had been severely critical of the hospital regime, a “moral medical” treatment was instituted with the patients being given jobs or occupations as well as medical therapy with drugs such as chloral and digitalis.

  It was a world within a world. Its water came from an artesian well within the grounds, so that the patients remained free of the cholera and dysentery which raged around them. And there was a monthly ball, where the patients danced with one another; many observers commented on this moving and somewhat bizarre occasion. Yet still the persistent question about madness remained. Charles Dickens walked past the hospital one night, and was moved to reflect: “Are not all of us outside of this hospital, who dream, more or less in the condition of those inside it every night of our lives?”

  The rate of insanity in London had tripled by the middle of the nineteenth century, and other institutions for the mentally ill were established; those of Hanwell and Colney Hatch were perhaps the best known. Bethlem moved to the country, near Beckenham, in 1930, but by that time the capital was well stocked with asylums. These in turn have become known as mental health units or “trusts,” where patients are “service users.”

  In more recent years, too, the mentally ill have been released on medication “into the community.” On the streets of London it is not uncommon to see passers-by talking rapidly to themselves and sometimes gesticulating wildly. On most main thoroughfares you will see a lone figure huddled in a posture of despair, or staring vacantly. Occasionally a stranger will shout at, or offer violence to, others. There was once a famous saying of London life,

  Go thy way! Let me go mine

  to which may be added,

  I to rage, and you to dine.

  Women and Children

  An etching of a “mud-lark,” one of those small children who searched the banks of the Thames for pieces of coal, wood or metal, which could be sold in the streets. They comprised one of those small communities, separate and apart, which made up the sum of London’s heterogeneous life.

  CHAPTER 67

  The Feminine Principle

  It is generally supposed that London is, or was, a male city. Phallic symbols of copper alloy have been found beneath Leadenhall Street and Cheapside, and phallic sculpture in Coleman Street. The great phallus-like erection, Canary Wharf Tower, now dominates all of London; it is also a symbol of successful commercial speculation, thus displaying the twin poles of London’s identity. The buildings close to that tower have “wrap-around sheaths” of sandstone, yet another example of the penis in stone. London has always been the capital of masculine fashion, its structures of power characteristically dominated by men. Rivers are normally feminine deities, but London’s river is known as “Old Father Thames.” Yet there is a strange ambiguity in all this imagery. The Monument rises erect by London Bridge, and upon its base London is depicted as a weeping woman. In its fall, through fire, it changes its gender.

  In the early written records women acquire status and identity only through their commercial dealings. The role of medieval London widows, for example, is indicative of a world in which trade, matrimony and piety were thoroughly mingled. On the death of her husband, the widow was allowed a half-share in his goods and, unlike civic law in the rest of the country, was permitted to occupy their joint house until the time of her own death. She could become a freewoman of the city, and was expected to continue her husband’s old trade or business. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the known widows of artisans, for example, all continued with their husbands’ businesses. The continuity of trade was important to the civic authorities, but these arrangements also suggest the formidable position which women could assume in the city. They could also join the guilds or fraternities and there is a record, from the fraternity of the Holy Trinity in St. Stephen’s, Coleman Street, of a charity box “to whiche box eche brother & sister schal paie eche quarter a peny.” There were also rich widows who played a large part in city life, but they were in the minority. In another context there are references in fourteenth-century records to “the female practitioners of surgery.” Certainly there were “wise women,” who fulfilled a role as doctors within certain London parishes, but we may also find women in the trades of haberdasher and jeweller, spice merchant and confectioner. For every twenty or thirty men paying tax, however, only one woman appears in the fourteenth-century records.

  The general images of order and subordination, of decency and seemliness, were of course applied to the women of the city. For many centuries unwed women went bareheaded, while married women wore hats or hoods. Wife-beating was acceptable, while the ducking of “scolding” wives was on occasions deemed a fit punishment. The ecclesiastical authorities often condemned women for wearing red antimony and other “make-up” upon their faces, for curling their hair with tongs of iron, and for wearing finery; they had, as it were, taken on the unnatural colours of the city.
In contrast, the presence of the great convents in London, up to the time of the Dissolution, offered an image of women who had retired from the world; theoretically, at least, they were part of the city of God rather than the city of men. A general portrait of London women might, therefore, be constructed along familiar lines as the subordinate elements of a hierarchical and patriarchal society; in a city of power and of business, they retain a supportive invisible presence.

  Yet the women of London were also distinguished by other characteristics. The daughters of wealthier households, together with some of those from the merchant class, were sent to elementary schools; we may presume that a significant number of women could read and write, or owned manuscripts, and might deal with the males of the household on terms of practical if not theoretical equality. A study of wills and testaments, Medieval London Widows, 1300–1500, edited by C.M. Barron and Anne F. Sutton, describes them as “verbose, bossy, disorganised, affectionate and anecdotal” with a concern for distant relatives and distinct expressions of affection for household servants. They also reveal “networks of female friendships and loyalties” which stretched across London.

  Most of the early descriptions of London women, then, suggest that they were very much part of the city. One German traveller of the fifteenth century entered a London tavern and a woman, presumably the landlady, kissed him fully on the lips and murmured: “Whatever you desire, that we will gladly do.” This is not quite the docility and propriety expected of women of a patriarchal culture, but it supports evidence from other sources of women who seem to be filled with all the energy and licentiousness of the city.

  Representations of women in drama, from the scold to Noah’s wife, display characteristics of aggression and violence. As mentioned earlier, in the Chronicles of London for 1428, there is recorded the fate of a Breton in London who murdered a widow “an as he wente hys wey where as he hadd i-do this cursed dede, women of the same parissh come owte with stonys and canell dong, and there made an ende of hym in the hyghe strete, so that he wente no ferther notwithstondynge the constables and othere men allso, the wiche hade hyum undir gouernans to condite hym forwarde; ffor ther whas a gret manye of them, and no mercy ne no pity.” This scene, which was “without Algate” and thus on the site of the present Whitechapel High Street, is of some interest. A large party of women, aroused by the murder of one of their own, overpower or intimidate a group of men surrounding the murderer; then they stone him to death. This is not a city of order and subordination, but one in which some communal or egalitarian feminine spirit seems to be at work. The women were also without “mercy ne no pity,” which in turn suggests that they were in some sense brutalised or rendered callous by their existence in London.

  In an early sixteenth-century account it is revealed that “the women have much more liberty than perhaps in any other place.” The same foreign observer reports that “they also know well how to make use of it, for they go dressed out in exceedingly fine clothes, and give all attention to their ruffs and stuffs, to such a degree indeed that, as I am informed, many a one does not hesitate to wear velvet in the streets, which is common with them, whilst at home perhaps they have not a piece of dry bread.” There was a sixteenth-century proverb that England, for which we may safely substitute London, was hell for horses, purgatory for servants but a paradise for women. One of the central images of the age is that of Dame Alice More berating her husband, Thomas More, for his stupidity in resisting the king’s will. Her remarks to him were often sharp and occasionally sarcastic, but he received them cheerfully enough. Perhaps only in London could that intense spirit of equality be sustained.

  Of course such treatment was the prerogative of rich or well-connected families; the notions of liberty, on the streets, meant different things. So the same foreign observer suggested that “many witches are found in London, who frequently do much mischief by means of hail and tempest”; he seems here to be invoking an irrational fear of women, a disturbance which the experience of the city itself appears to engender. Records of the seventeenth century suggest that the troubling spirit was not curbed. One stranger to London wrote that he had sometimes met in the streets “a woman carrying a figure of straw representing a man, crowned with very ample horns, preceded by a drum and followed by a mob, making a most grating noise with tongs, grid-irons, frying pans and saucepans. I asked what was the meaning of all this: they told me, that a woman had given her husband a sound beating, for accusing her of making him a cuckold.” That example of violence can be followed by another, when “some of our party saw a wicked woman in a rage with an individual supposed to belong to the Spanish embassy. She urged the crowd to mob him, setting the example by belabouring him herself with a cabbage stalk.” And, again in another report, “the English seem to fear the company of women.” The women of London “are the most dangerous women in the world.” This may or may not be accurate, but for all the harshness there was also gaiety. Another traveller noted “what is particularly curious is that the women as well as the men, in fact more often than they, will frequent the taverns or ale-houses for enjoyment. They count it a great honour to be taken there and given wine with sugar to drink: and if one woman only is invited, then she will bring three or four other women along and they gaily toast each other.”

  There were less happy circumstances. For every engraving of a matron, or merchant’s wife, there are pictures of women who are almost literally slaves of the city.

  It was the tradition that women sold perishable goods, such as fruit and milk, whereas men customarily sold durable or solid articles; perhaps it was an obscured representation of the fact that, in the city, the women themselves were more perishable. The street-sellers depicted by Marcellus Laroon in the 1680s form a remarkable collection of urban types. A seller of strawberries, wearing a loose hood, looks curiously pensive. A crippled woman selling fish has an unutterably weary face, although Laroon’s editor and commentator, Sean Shesgreen, remarks that she is “dressed in an eccentrically stylish way … careful and even fastidious about her appearance”; it is a curiously London mixture of theatricality and pathos. The seller of “great Eeles” is lively and more alert, with an expression so quizzical and yet so wary that she might be ready to see, or hear, anything as she made her way through the streets. Single women were certainly vulnerable to every kind of attention and even molestation. The female seller of wax is “a study in melancholy, she wears an impassive almost stupid look and walks with a wooden gait.” Her clothes are “tattered and run-down, patched in various places and eaten away at the sleeves.” Here is a woman brutalised by the city into a state of indifference and neglect. The seller of apples has a peculiar sneer upon her face, as if demonstrating her contempt either for her customers or for her calling. The “merry Milk Maid” is anything but merry. The female mackerel-seller, an ancient creature with palsied face and puckered eye, is a definite urban type, the image of London marked upon her visage. So too is the seller of cherries whose intelligent expression suggests that she manoeuvres successfully through the streets and markets of London.

  Another urban type, endlessly displayed in chapbooks and upon the stage, was the female innkeeper immortalised by Mistress Quickly but endlessly renewed ever since. “At every review in Hyde Park these trollops are certainly in a hackney, will stop the coach to drink pint glasses with ‘em at Phillips, yet wonder at the liberties some women take, and tho’ they are ready to eat every fellow they see, can’t believe any of their sex virtuous but themselves.” This is entirely characteristic, and in the writing of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there seems to be a consensus that the city tends to harden, or sharpen, female perceptions.

  London wreaks transformations—the angry become docile, the querulous resigned—but in terms of women it was generally believed that there was a downward draught. London was not a suitable place for women. Those who made a pact, or compact, with it were regarded as fallen; the earliest actresses upon the stage, for example, were considered
as “brazen and tarred.” Certainly this was true of Eleanor Gwynn whose “pert vivacity,” to use Macaulay’s phrase, recommended her to Charles II. She was a genuine London type, “frank, unsentimental,” according to the Dictionary of National Biography. Her behaviour was considered “unedifying,” while her remarks were often “sharp and indecent.” “I am the Protestant whore,” she once declared and there is a famous scene of her cursing upon the stage at the spectacle of an almost empty house. She was “indiscreet” and “wild,” and “her eyes when she laughed became almost invisible.” And she, a seller of perishable goods like other women, herself perished young.

  Mary Frith, otherwise known as Moll Cutpurse, again became a figure symbolic of London itself; she was born in the Barbican in 1589, and quickly acquired a reputation for violent eccentricity. Her portrait became the frontispiece of Middleton’s and Dekker’s The Roaring Girle, a true story of city life, and depicts her in male clothes complete with pipe and sword. In fact she generally dressed as a man, and was well known for her stentorian voice. In the twenty-first century this might be seen as a token of sexual identity; in fact it was a token of urban identity, her behaviour manifesting one of the most complicated but significant aspects of female life in the city. By dressing in male clothes she understood where the power of London lay; that is why she became more ostensibly masculine than any male. Yet there may be anxiety, or misery, involved in that pursuit. Mary Frith declared that “when viewing the Manners and Customs of the Age, I see myself so wholly distempered, and so estranged from them, as if I had been born and bred in the Antipodes.” This strangely reflects the words of Aphra Behn, who died in a garret in 1689 not far from where Mary Frith was born, and who declared that “All my life is nothing but extremes.” She is now considered to be a harbinger of feminist consciousness in literature, having written novels, plays, pamphlets and poems on an heroic scale, but, as the Dictionary of National Biography suggests, “She attempted to write in a style that would be mistaken for that of a man.” Hence she was accused of “uncleanness,” “coarseness” and “indecency.” But there was no alternative; it was the style of the city. They had to become “unruly women,” in the phrase of the period, in order that their identities or gifts might survive.