‘females in Britain’: this and the next three paragraphs: William Acton, Prostitution, Considered in its Moral, Social, & Sanitary Aspects (London, John Churchill, 1857), p. 18; Michael Ryan, Prostitution in London, with a comparative View of that of Paris and New York ... (London, H. Bailliere, 1839), pp. 176–7.
‘precise figure’: ‘robbery and violence’: Acton, Prostitution, p. 95; Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 4, p. 224; Metropolitan police commissioner: Philpotts, Companion to Little Dorrit, p. 200; 1841 figures: Acton, p. 17.
‘in their characters’: Lynda Nead, Myths of Sexuality: Representations of Women in Victorian Britain (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 103–4.
‘Mayhew’s fourth volume’: I am grateful to Eileen Curran, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Priti Joshi and Scott Rogers for their help in piecing together the few scraps of evidence that remain relating to these men, and to Penny Hatfield, Eton College Archivist, for confirming Bracebridge Hemyng’s time at Eton (which he attended as the less exotically named Samuel Bracebridge Heming).
‘all that we have’: Hanger: Stuart Reid, ‘Hanger, George, fourth Baron Coleraine’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, January 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.londonlibrary.co.uk/view/article/12195, accessed 18 May 2011]; caricatures of Hanger pimping for the Prince of Wales: Elizabeth Cooke, The Damnation of John Donellan: A Mysterious Case of Death (London, Profile, 2011), p. 64; the citation in Mayhew, London Labour, is at vol. 4, p. 215.
‘cannot be mistaken’: Acton, Prostitution, p. 18; ‘The Pawnbroker’s Shop’, Sketches by Boz, pp. 228–9.
‘of years later’: Walkowitz, Prostitution, pp. 15–19.
‘girls under sixteen’: Ryan, Prostitution in London, pp. 119, 125–9, 139–41; footnote on the felony/misdemeanour distinction: Sindall, Street Violence, p. 21; venereal hospital figures: Walkowitz, Prostitution, p. 17.
‘she comes home’: sixteen-year-old: Mayhew, London Labour, vol. 1, p. 413.
‘whores in that way’: Hudson, Munby, pp. 40–41.
‘over their shoulders’: bonnets and shawls: Walkowitz, Prostitution, p. 26; Boulton and Park: Morris B. Kaplan, ‘“Men in Petticoats”: Border Crossings in the Queer Case of Mr. Boulton and Mr. Park’, in Pamela Gilbert (ed.), Imagined London (Albany, NY, State University of New York Press, 2002), pp. 53–4.
‘full of women’: ‘Walter’, My Secret Life, vol. 2, p. 94; Yokel’s Preceptor: or, More Sprees in London! Being a ... Show-up of All the Rigs and Doings of the Flash Cribs in This Great Metropolis ... (London, H. Smith [?1855]), p. 3.
‘for a bus’: Paterfamilias’ letter: The Times, 7 January 1862; responses on subsequent days; ‘Rape of the Glances’, Saturday Review, 1 February 1862, pp. 124–5; lithograph: [C. J. Culliford], ‘Scene in Regent Street’, c.1865, in Nead, Victorian Babylon, p. 63.
‘girls these were’: Great Expectations, p. 273; the historian who makes the suggestion is Michael Slater, ‘The Bachelor’s Pocket Book for 1851’, in Don Richard Cox (ed.), Sexuality and Victorian Literature (Knoxville, TN, University of Tennessee Press, 1984), p. 139; pretty girls: ‘Home Sweet Home’, All the Year Round, 15, 7 April 1866, p. 303.
‘with season tickets’: Egan, Life in London, pp. 173, 211, 214; Hékékyan Bey, Journal, British Library, Add MSS 37,448; MacKenzie, The American in England, vol. 1, p. 211.
‘dirty book’: The three British Library volumes are: The New Swell’s Night Guide to the Bowers of Venus ... (London, J. Paul [?1840]), The Swell’s Night Guide Through the Metropolis, ‘by the Hon. F. L. G.’ (London, ‘printed for the author, for private circulation, by Roger Funnyman’, [?1841]), and The Swell’s Night Guide Through the Metropolis, or, A Peep through the Great Metropolis..., ‘by Thelord [sic] Chief Baron’ [which suggests Renton Nicholson] ([place and publisher cut away], [?1846]). The dates of the first two are the suggestions of the British Library catalogue; the last has ‘1846’ written on its flyleaf. Neither Copac nor WorldCat lists a copy of The Bachelor’s Pocket Book for 1851; my information and citations come from Slater, ‘The Bachelor’s Pocket Book for 1851’. In this essay Slater does not appear to be aware of the Swell’s Guides, so it is only from the material that he cites that I can see the overlap/copying of material. There may of course be much more, or none apart from the few citations; Yokel’s Preceptor, pp. 7–9.
‘from backstage’: The New Swell’s Night Guide, ‘Saloons of the Theatres’ [no page]; ‘Theatrical Examiner’, Examiner, 26 July 1840, in Dickens’ Journalism, vol. 2, p. 42; Eagle Tavern: in Tracy C. Davis, Actresses as Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture (London, Routledge, 1991), p. 81; Alhambra: Kirwan, Palace and Hovel, pp. 138–9, 143.
‘commercial basis’: Dickens writing a cheque for £50: Tomalin, Charles Dickens, p. 293, although she has no doubt that the cheque is for Nelly, while it seems to me just as likely to have been for the manager, to subsidize her salary; The New Swell’s Night Guide.
‘closed at one’: Dickens to Lord Lyttelton, 16 August 1855, Letters, vol. 7, p. 691; Argyle Rooms: Henry H. Wellbeloved, London Lions, for Country Cousins and Friends about Town ... (London, William Charlton Wright, 1827), p. 31; ‘Anonyma’, London by Night (1862), pp. 34, 37, 40, 42; decor: Kirwan, Palace and Hovel, pp. 147–9.
‘sentimental ballads’: Holborn Casino: London by Night, pp. 56, 59; Ratcliffe Highway saloon: Archer, The Pauper, the Thief, p. 117.
‘on that path’: Caldwell’s: Hudson, Munby, p. 22; dancing master’s assemblies: London by Night, the Bachelor’s..., pp. 1–5, gives one such list; Caldwell’s reputation: Hayward, Days of Dickens, pp. 122–3.
‘steak and oysters’: 1830s’ finish: Tristan, London Journal, pp. 75–7; the Finish, James Street: Vizetelly, Glances Back, vol. 1, p. 170; Barnes’s: Kirwan, Palace and Hovel, p. 150.
‘Grosvenor Square’: streetwalking locations: in 1818, The London Guide, and Stranger’s Safeguard..., ‘by a Gentleman’ (London, Bumpus, 1818), p. 134; other locations: Mason, The Making of Victorian Sexuality, p. 89; footnote on the Haymarket: Trollope, What I Remember, p. 55; Dombey and Son, p. 514.
‘no longer exists’: Tristan, London Journal, pp. 74–5; footnote: Flora Tristan uses Ryan, p. 91, and Colquhoun’s statistics, p. 79; ‘Walter’, My Secret Life, vol. 1, p. 146; 1841 and 1861 censuses: White, London in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 295ff.
‘roads were lighter’: walking to the West End: Tristan, London Journal, p. 75; Haymarket hours: Davis, Actresses as Working Women, pp. 144–5; Regent Street hours: ‘Walter’, My Secret Life, vol. 1, p. 345; western suburbs: ibid., vol. 1, p. 143.
‘a minor clerk’: police returns: Walkowitz, Prostitution, p. 23; Mary: ‘Walter’, ibid., vol. 1, pp. 369, 372.
‘or their communities’: Whitechapel: Hollingshead, Ragged London, p. 49; sailors’ wives: Walkowitz, ibid., p. 29.
‘accommodation house’: ‘a few shillings’: ‘Walter’, My Secret Life, vol. 1, p. 173; economics: ibid., vol. 1, p. 145; footnote on streetwalkers’ income: the room and dress are costed by Walter, but the remaining figures are my own, based on the working-class budgets outlined in my The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed (London, HarperCollins, 2003), passim.
‘for my money’: light: ‘F. L. G.’, The Swell’s Night Guide, ‘Accommodation Houses’ [no page]; Walter’s first accommodation house: My Secret Life, vol. 1, p. 72; footnote: ibid., vol. 2, p. 124; Gracechurch Street: Slater, ‘The Bachelor’s Pocket Book’, p. 131; short visit: ‘Walter’, ibid., vol. 1, p. 75.
‘on p. 360’: Francis Place and reasons for improvement: Mason, Making of Victorian Sexuality, p. 28; cabman: ‘Walter’, My Secret Life, vol. 2, p. 56; Titchfield Street: ‘Walter’, My Secret Life, vol. 1, p. 263 and passim; Mother H: ‘The Lord Chief Baron’, The Swell’s Night Guide, p. 33.
‘sharing living expenses’: Walkowitz, Prostitution, p. 24.
‘generally known here’: ‘F. L. G.’, The Swell’s Night Guide, pp
. 42–3, NB, these passages, and the names and addresses of several introducing houses, reappear verbatim in ‘The Bachelor’s Pocket Book’, cited by Michael Slater, p. 137.
‘at Marble Arch’: Slater, ‘The Bachelor’s Pocket Book’, p. 133.
‘frequently heard’: Nicholson, Autobiography of a Fast Man, p. 96.
‘per cent in theatres’: location and percentage of offences: H. G. Cocks, Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire in the Nineteenth Century (London, I. B. Tauris, 2003), p. 29. For this section I am indebted to Dr Alison Hannegan for providing me with many helpful references, and to Peter Parker for guiding me to Dr Hannegan in the first instance.
‘the owners arrested’: Rictor Norton is the acknowledged expert in this area. David Robertson: Rictor Norton, ‘The Vere Street Coterie’, The Gay Subculture in Georgian England. Updated 7 August 2009
‘and sex-workers’: Cocks, Nameless Offences, p. 68; soldier in court: Holloway, The Phoenix of Sodom, p. 29; The Times, 16 August 1825, p. 3; Vagrancy Act: Cocks, Nameless Offences, p. 56.
‘such roaring boys’: Edward Leeves, Leaves from a Victorian Diary, intro. by John Sparrow (London, Secker & Warburg, 1985), passim.
‘author’s preconceptions’: Yokel’s Preceptor, pp. 5–7.
‘or anyone else’: Hudson, Munby, p. 188; Druid’s Hall dances: Charles Upchurch, Before Wilde: Sex Between Men in Britain’s Age of Reform (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2009), p. 75.
‘were rare’: Boulton and Park in this paragraph and the next: Kaplan, ‘“Men in Petticoats”’, pp. 45–68, and Cocks, Nameless Offences, pp. 105ff. The fashion information is from The Times, 30 April 1870, p. 11; ‘A Visit to Newgate’, Sketches by Boz, p. 244.
‘ended her life’: Tristan, London Journal, p. 79; Ryan and Tait: Nead, Myths of Sexuality, pp. 145ff.; Acton, Prostitution, p. 38; ‘Anonyma’, London by Night, p. 176.
‘drown themselves’: incidence of suicide and gender, and engraving: L. J. Nicoletti, ‘Morbid Topographies: Placing Suicide in Victorian London’, in Lawrence Phillips, (ed.), A Mighty Mass of Brick and Smoke: Victorian and Edwardian Representations of London (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2007), pp. 10–12; Sala, Twice Round the Clock, p. 70.
‘leap from another’: ‘The man who loves’: ‘The Millennium’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 153: 25 (June 1829), p. 703; Dickens, ‘The Drunkard’s Death’, Sketches by Boz, p. 565; ‘English Bridge of Sighs’: Charles Mackay, ‘Rambles Among the Rivers, no. 1: The Thames and its Tributaries’, Bentley’s Miscellany, April 1839, p. 378.
‘over the ground’: Hood: ‘The Bridge of Sighs’, The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood (NY, James Miller, 1867), vol. 1, pp. 151–4; details of Mary Furley: The Times, 1 April 1844, p. 7; ‘Some Recollections of Mortality’, All the Year Round, 16 May 1863, in Dickens’ Journalism, vol. 4, p. 224.
‘the morning mist’: Oliver Twist, p. 389; David Copperfield, pp. 317, 625ff.; Little Dorrit, p. 217.
‘all he cared’: Dickens, Barnaby Rudge, ed. Gordon Spence (first published 1841; Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1986), p. 153.
‘of the Monument’: suicides from the Monument: Nicoletti, ‘Morbid Topographies’, pp. 13–14; Bartlett, What I Saw in London, pp. 182–3.
‘for an end’: ‘Wapping Workhouse’, All the Year Round, 18 February 1860, in Dickens’ Journalism, vol. 4, p. 44.
‘he was alive’: Charles Lamb, cited in Baron (ed.), London 1066–1914, p. 25; Little Dorrit, p. 67; Henry Wallis, Death of Chatterton, is in the Tate; ‘Thoughts about People’, Sketches by Boz, p. 251.
‘one and the same’: ‘Chambers’, All the Year Round, 18 August 1860, in Dickens’ Journalism, vol. 4, p. 164.
‘dark with death’: Our Mutual Friend, p. 77; Edwin Drood, p. 258; ‘The surface’: Carlton Chronicle, 40, 8 April 1837, p. 635.
‘their usual uproar: Little Dorrit, p. 895.
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