The King's City

by Don Jordan

  The most feared scourge of the sexually active was syphilis, known as the pox and sometimes as ‘the French disease’ – so-called because of the belief it had come from France, even though it may originally have reached Europe from North America or Africa, or simply have been around since the dawn of mankind. Physicians usually referred to it as lues (after the neo-Latin for plague) venerea. It spread rapidly through Europe in the sixteenth century and by the middle of the seventeenth had reached epidemic proportions in London. The pox was so ubiquitous that it was frequently referred to in private correspondence and public newssheets, as well as in plays, ballads and satires. A pox on you!’ was a common insult.

  Treatment was difficult and haphazard* Under the current state of medical knowledge, there was no proper understanding of the underlying nature of the disease or its causes. A further complication was that gonorrhoea and syphilis were sometimes mistaken for one another, for in their initial stages they could present similar symptoms. Despite these drawbacks, some treatments appeared to work. Around London, sweating houses – sweating tubs, as they were known – were common, where those afflicted with the pox could be subjected to extreme heat and hope to sweat their way to a cure. The irony is that the ailment itself could also cause sweating. A cure there would seem to be, but of a kind, for the initial signs of syphilis tend to disappear in anything from ten to forty days, while the disease lurks on inside waiting to wreak terrible harm in later years.

  Fortunately for Charles, when he and Louise contracted syphilis, they had the best doctors available to treat them. One of the personal physicians to the King was Richard Wiseman, an experienced and thoughtful man who wrote a handbook for doctors.1 Dedicated to Charles, it was the distillation of a lifetime’s work, primarily as a former ship’s doctor, dealing with all the marvellous and shocking assaults inflicted on humanity at large. There were eight treatises, each one on a particular ailment. The first four were concerned with naturally occurring conditions such as tumours, ulcers, haemorrhoids and The King’s Evil, or scrofula (the King’s miraculous power to cure the last of these was carefully acknowledged). In the second group the experience of an old ship’s doctor shone out from the subject headings: wounds caused by knives or swords, gunshot wounds, fractures, and venereal disease.

  Wiseman described lues venerea as a

  venomous contagious disease gotten either immediately or mediately from an impure coition . . . I say immediately or mediately, because it is very manifest that not only the persons so copulating are infected but also the children derived from such parents, and nurses that suckle such children, and any other child that sucks upon those nurses; and so forwards.

  He was talking here about both gonorrhoea and syphilis, for he, like others of the time, thought of the former as an initial manifestation of the latter. So what was there to do?

  Now the known remedies, all or some of which we use in this cure, are Bleeding, Purging, Vomiting, Salivating, Sweating, Cordials and Opiates; to which we may add Dietetical directions, especially Alternative Drinks, and Topics.

  Concerning Phlebotomy, tho’ it do not cure the Disease, yet in the very beginning of it we usually let blood, to calm the fermenting Humours, and dispose them for evacuation, and prescribe a Clyster before or after.

  Purging was carried out by administering potions made up of posset or whey, mixed with senna, rhubarb, sarsaparilla, cremor tartari, manna, tamarind, etc.

  It was not only sweating houses that mimicked the effect of the disease itself; sweating was also the result of that other common treatment for those who could afford it, mercury. Mercury was administered by absorption topically through the skin, from mercury-filled compresses, or by taking mercury pills. The latter was far and away the most harmful. Mercury poisoning at first caused salivation, followed by worsening symptoms including inflammation of the mouth, mouth ulcers, rotten teeth, bad breath, inflammation of the intestines, increased heart rate, kidney failure and finally death.

  In the case of pain we add a grain or more of laudanum. Mercury thus mixt with purgatives it is from which we must expect our main success. For though the other may purge strongly, they of themselves have not virtue to check the malignity of even the lesser species of this disease.

  This I the rather add, because of the wickedness of many Pretenders, who will in this Cure declaim against the use of mercury, in which if they speak honestly, and follow their Judgements (and do not give it at the same time when they speak against it, as many do) they will prolong their cure to no purpose, and meet with disgrace at last; it being very sure, that no species of it will be cured without it,

  I have myself made, and seen endeavoured by some worthy late practitioners in our Faculties without Mercury, but by omitting of it, our Cures were rendered tedious and unsuccessful, the Ulcer the while spreading and breaking out fresh in some parts while we were endeavouring to Cure them in others, the Disease becoming more fierce in some of them whilst their bodies were purged with Caharticks without mercury.

  The methods of salivating are divers, but all by mercury. . . When we design Salivation by Mercurius Dulcis, we give it from 20 to 25 grains and sometime to thirty, either in a spoonful of white bread and milk. . . or in some such like cordial. . .

  Mercury amalgamated with gold doth vomit and raise Salivation . . .

  The humours being evacuated by salivation and purging, Sweating will be necessary . . .

  Mercury is used both externally and internally.

  Condoms were not yet widely available – they would become so in the 1700s, made from oiled silk, or the innards of various animals, including fish bladders. The rudimentary condoms that did exist were perfunctory and for use not to protect from the pox but to prevent pregnancy.

  Madam Creswell’s luck ran out not because of the pox but the magistrates. Perhaps the public mood changed and her influential clients were no longer able to protect her, or her enemies in the lory faction brought influence to bear on the authorities. Either way, she was charged and found guilty of earning a living by vice. She was imprisoned in the Bridewell prison, situated between Fleet Street and the Thames, beside the River Fleet, and rebuilt after the Great Fire on its original site as a large, grey, stone institution arranged around two courtyards.

  Within two years of her incarceration, Creswell found herself unwittingly providing the nom de plume for the anonymous writer of a new work entitled The Whore’s Rhetorick, a salacious tale masquerading as an instruction manual for a prostitute.2 In this work, Madam Creswell instructed the daughter of a ruined Royalist family how to live by her sexual wiles, a theme exploited in similar works, most notably in The English Rogue.

  Madam Creswell died in prison, possibly of tuberculosis. The probably apocryphal story was told that she made provision for her funeral in advance, paying a preacher a handsome fee to speak at her funeral but say nothing of her profession. Come the funeral, the preacher supposedly said of the deceased, ‘She was born well, she lived well, and she died well; for she was born with the name of Creswell, lived at Clerkenwell and died in Bridewell.’3

  The writer of The Whore’s Rhetorick was not in fact anonymous, nor was the work entirely new’. Its original author was Ferrante Pallavicmo and it had been published in Italian forty years before. Now it was translated and amended for an English readership.4 Erotic literature was widely available in Restoration London, which had alongside its famous, racy theatre a much racier underground literary world where anonymous works circulated to a well-heeled and leisured class. Demand was sufficiently brisk to support a market for imported material in foreign languages. On 8 February 1668, Samuel Fepys bought an example from his habitual bookseller John Martin at the Sign of the Bell in St Pauls churchyard. L’Ecofe des Filles, by Michel Millot and Jean lAnge, had been published in France in 1655. The following day, Pepys described going to his room and reading it: A lewd book but what do me no harm to read for information’s sake,’ he recorded. Realising he was not being truthful to his sec
ret diary, Pepys added, ‘But it did hazer my prick para stand all the while and un a vez to discharger.’ In plain words, he masturbated. After he finished, he burned the book, ‘that it might not be among my books to my shame’.5 Though image mattered to Pepys, he was unable to control posterity as well as he hoped, for his encoded diaries, with their difficult shorthand and deliberate mix of foreign and slang words for salacious passages, were ultimately cracked.

  L’Ecole and The Whore’s Rhetorick were early examples of a genre known as whore’s dialogues, erotic books written in the form of cod lessons for the education of innocent young women, often with tongue-in-cheek instructions on how to avoid the pitfalls of debauchery. They were very popular during the Restoration era. In the same year The Whore’s Rhetorick appeared, another first-person narrative, The London Jilt, was published; it purported to be by a well-born young woman whose parents had fallen on hard times and left her to make her own way by prostitution.6 Here a familiar strain appeared: the foreword written by a person (male) purporting to be the editor of the memoir, and to have only the best interests of everyone, men and women, at heart. Of the Jilt, the author says: ‘She is set here before thee as a beacon to warn thee of the Shoals and Quick-sands, on which thou wilt of necessity Shipwrack thy all, if thou blindly and wilfully continuest and perseverest in steering that course of Female Debauchery, which will inevitably prove at length thy utteT Destruction.’

  What follows is not, as suggested by the foreword, a warning of the perils of debauchery, but a hypocritical about-turn by the author to produce a first-person narrative whose object is to titillate the reader with stories of the harlot’s busy schedule and the rightness of her calling. The eponymous Jilt goes so far as to warn against marrying a virgin: ‘for two persons that are Novices and unexperienced in Copulation, the children they get are commonly Fools, which is a thing People ought to be more careful of than any other.’7

  The London Jilt became the second best seller of the age, beaten only by The English Rogue. The narrator Cornelia tells us that after her father was ruined by trickery she and her mother were forced into prostitution. What follows is both a history of Cornelia’s sexual encounters and an account of her need to make a living in a world that gives her few options. Whereas Aphra Beim was able to turn to writing to stay afloat, the fictional Cornelia’s talents lie in a different direction and she is forced to make use of what she has to offer. The Jilt therefore gives us a picture of what life could be like for women in London in the situation those such as Cornelia and her mother found themselves. Their circumstances were, one feels, no different from those experienced by Elizabeth Creswell, or by Nell Gwyn’s mother when she found herself without a husband and with two daughters to feed. In Mrs Gwyn’s case, one of them at least – Rose – became a common prostitute, while the other – Nell – became a courtesan, a prostitute in silk. From these examples we can see that the events narrated by the fictional Cornelia reflected real life for many women in Restoration London.

  Despite censorship, anonymous works of erotica and soft pornography thrived, indicating that an official softly-softly approach existed regarding such material. It has been argued that the public espousal of sexual themes was a propaganda weapon used by Tory apologists against Puritanism.8 It is little wonder that modern feminist writers have paid considerable attention to what has for long been a forgotten work.

  The London Jilt was not the kind of book the average bookseller would have stocked. Anyone wanting a copy had to go to a bookseller where they were already known, or directly to the publisher. To obtain a copy, a customer in the know would have turned south off Fleet Street, past the newly built Bell Tavern – the only pub designed by Christopher Wren – and down Bride Lane, towards Wren’s more notable St Bride’s Church, an ancient place of worship going back thousands of years to preChristian times, and now rebuilt in classical style.† Past the church, next door to the Bear Tavern, could be found the shop of Henry Rhodes, an established publisher of pornography and erotica.

  As The London Jilt was published by a firm specialising in such matter, one is led to conjecture that the anonymous author was someone already successful in the new genre of fictional memoir. The finger has been pointed in the direction of both Richard Head and his publisher Francis Kirk man.9 Jilt was a success among the middle and upper classes of England, as well as across the Atlantic among the God-fearing Puritans of New England.

  It was no accident that a plethora of anonymous books on similar themes appeared around this time. The Licensing of the Press Act 1662 had expired in 1679 and had not been renewed. The first Licensing Act, passed in 1637, had set up an official censor, made it illegal to publish any book without official permission, restricted publishing to London, Cambridge and Oxford, and placed strict rules on journalism. This meant that for some time the only official publication in London was the government’s own Gazette. For many years the censor had been Roger L’Estrange, a virulent anti-Parliamentarian and staunch royalist, who saw his role as being to dampen criticism of the Crown and support the monarchy at all costs. Even L’Estrange was unable to keep down the anonymous peddlers of salacious literature. They flourished, like so much else, in London’s underworld market. These anonymous books did not gain the fame of later works whose authors were proclaimed on the title page, but they did establish the market for them, setting the tone and providing the form and often the content. When the Licensing Acts lapsed, a small but active underground publishing trade was able to rise to the surface and flourish.

  Without these mid-century anonymous writers, later works such as Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders could not have been written. Defoe’s ‘sempiternal bawd’ Moll, telling us her story in a first-person narrative, was a true successor to those characters in the pages of The English Rogue and The London Jilt Such anonymous novels were as important in the social mix of London as the theatre. Because of the necessity for their authors to hide their identities, these books have not stayed the test of time as well as certain plays of equally questionable merit or taste. In their way, though, they told the same kind of tale that was popular on the stage. Like the playwrights, they took their cue from Jacobeans John Fletcher and Ben Jonson, giving us stories of silly men gulled by clever women, and roguish men getting one over on the gullible.

  The trade in sexual exotica in London illustrated more than merely an appetite among the moneyed classes for vicarious thrills — they illustrated a healthy publishing and bookselling trade in the capital. By historical accident the printing trade had grown up around Fleet Street, one of Caxton’s apprentices having set up shop in the area in the fifteenth century. To keep up with changing tastes, booksellers became publishers, and publishers became writers. By the 1660s London had a thriving publishing trade along Fleet Street itself and in the alleys and streets running off it. Plays sold well, as did satire and poetry. The trashy new novels that satisfied the desires of city men found their upmarket mirror in poetical works, which could sell equally well. Much of the popular work was misogynistic, reaching its zenith (or nadir, if one prefers) with Robert Gould’s long ode, Love given O’er, or a Satyr against the Pride, Lust and Inconstancy Etc of Woman. Its title spoke for its content and attitude, and it quickly sold out its numerous printings. The printing presses of Fleet Street were seldom fed with the ink of human kindness.

  Apart from Madam Creswell, another famous bawd and brothelkeeper with notable social connections also died in prison. Damaris Page was born around 1610 and in 1658 she married a James Dry in Bermondsey. Little else is known about her early life except that she was charged with bigamy, having supposedly already married in 1640, but was acquitted.10 We know that Page made considerable money from her brothels, becoming a property owner and developing housing in The Highway, a Roman road running from Tower Hill eastwards through Shadwell and Wapping to Limehouse. The area was predominantly populated by sailors and their families, along with others connected with London’s seafaring business. Page’s brothels, s
uch as the Three Tuns, near the walls of the lower in Stepney, were regularly frequented by sailors.

  At a Trinity House dinner, Admiral Sir Edward Spragge once let it be known that as long as Mrs Page lived ‘he was sure he would not lack men’. From what Sir Edward let slip, it would appear that Page provided a press-gang service, whereby merchant seamen would be plied with drink and forcibly signed up to the navy. This interchange at a dinner between powerful men provides a window into the seedy world of London’s docklands where the needs of the navy coalesced with the services of the city’s brothel madams. According to Pepys, John Evelyn, ever the moralist, suffered great affliction’ on hearing what the admiral had to say.11

  Page was something more than an infamous brothel-keeper: she became the embodiment of a new public theatre of sexuality given expression in newssheets and printed satires, as well as on the stage. In 1668 she became embroiled in a scandal created by satirists attacking the Countess of Castlemaine. A satire called ‘The Poor-Whores Petition’ was supposedly written by Damaris Page and Mother Creswell; Page’s brothel, like Creswell’s, had been set upon in the apprentice riots of Easter week. These disturbances were a traditional outlet for the frustration of apprentices, who were not allowed to marry and had not the money, if they so wished, to become clients of brothels. That year the disturbances had been particularly violent, stoked by political unrest over a perception in the city that the Crown was not delivering on promised reforms enabling greater freedom for nonconformist sects. The satire was addressed to the Countess Castlemaine and was wildly funny.