The English: A Social History, 1066–1945 (Text Only)

by Christopher Hibbert

  By the end of the century, indeed, the theatre became fashionable rather than raffish. The curtain rose later and the audience arrived in the smart evening clothes they had worn at dinner or were to wear at an after-theatre supper party. The orchestra stalls, a seat in which cost 10s 6d at the Prince of Wales’s, gradually absorbed the pit; while the tiers of public boxes above the pit gave way to dress and upper circles, private boxes, and, almost out of sight, the gallery. The discontinuation of half-price seats after the start of the performance reduced the length of the programme; while the extension of the practice of booking seats not only gradually eliminated the unseemly scramble for places but also encouraged longer runs.20

  The provincial theatre was also transformed. Whereas in the past a famous London actor or actress would go on tour with a few associates and perform with local companies, now complete productions came from London by rail and staged their shows in theatres of ever-increasing splendour. The Grand Theatre and Opera House at Leeds, for example, was equipped with scene shops, rehearsal rooms, paint shop and pottery, a gas-making plant, a concert hall and ‘grand saloon’ as well as a large stage and an auditorium to accommodate 3200 people, 2600 of them seated, and 600 standing.21

  While these large theatres continued to prosper into the twentieth century, so did the smaller more recent provincial repertory theatres. The Gaiety repertory theatre in Manchester which opened in 1907 was followed two years later by a similar theatre in Liverpool and by another in Birmingham in 1913.22 By the 1920s Oxford and Bristol also had repertory theatres; and the number of amateur dramatic societies was growing so fast all over the country that in 1939 it was estimated that there were as many as 10,000.23

  56 The Flesh and the Spirit

  ‘Sexual indulgence before the age of twenty-five,’ a widely-read medical textbook of the 1830s advised, ‘not only retards the development of the genital organs, but of the whole body, impairs the strength, injures the constitution and shortens life.’ By the end of the century the admonitory tone of such works as this had changed very little. Dr William Acton – an authority on diseases of the urinary and generative organs and author of a book on the subject which remained in print long after his death in 1875 – was of the confirmed opinion that ‘much of the languor of mind, confusion of ideas, and inability to control the thoughts of which married men complain’ arose from sexual excess. It was essential that these sensual feelings should be ‘sobered down’. Fortunately for husbands, their wives were ‘not very much troubled with sexual feelings of any kind’.

  What men are habitually, women are only exceptionally [Acton wrote]. It is too true, I admit, as the divorce courts show, that there are some few women who have sexual desires so strong that they surpass those of men … I admit, of course, the existence of sexual desires terminating even in nymphomania, a form of insanity which those accustomed to visit lunatic asylums must be fully conversant with; but, with these sad exceptions, there can be no doubt that sexual feeling in the female is in the majority of cases in abeyance … The best mothers, wives and managers of households know little or nothing of sexual indulgence. Love of home, children, and domestic duties, are the only passions they feel … A modest woman seldom desires any sexual gratification for herself. She submits to her husband, but only to please him; and, but for the desire of maternity, would far rather be relieved from his attentions.1

  To seek relief in masturbation, that ‘most vicious’ form of incontinence, was not only a danger to health but might even result in death. Masturbation could, and often did, lead to consumption, curvature of the spine and insanity. Those who practised it could be recognized by their stunted frames, their underdeveloped muscles, sunken eyes, pasty complexions, acne, damp hands and skin. Parents should closely ‘watch their children’ for the tell-tale signs, and supervise a regimen of sponge-baths, showers and ‘gymnastic exercises regularly employed and carried to an extent just short of fatigue’.

  Acton was also, with far more justification, considered to be an expert on prostitution which, like most of his contemporaries, he considered to be inevitable and of which he assumed many if not most of his male, middle-class readers would have had personal experience before marriage. The numbers of prostitutes in the country was known to be immense, though estimates as to their numbers varied widely. W. T. Stead, who exposed in the Pall Mall Gazette the scandalous trade in the bodies of young children, calculated that in 1885 there were as many as 60,000 in London alone. Other, no doubt exaggerated, estimates put the figure as high as 80,000. Whatever their number, it was generally agreed that there were far more in the middle years of the century than there were in the later, most noticeably in the streets off the Haymarket and the Strand which, so one observer of low life commented, was ‘a favourite place for doxies to go to relieve their bladders’.

  The police took no notice of such trifles, provided it was not done in the great thoroughfare [he continued], (although I have seen at night women do it openly in the gutters of the Strand). In particular streets I have seen them pissing almost in rows; yet they mostly went in twos and threes … one usually standing up (to provide a screen)… Indeed the pissing in all the bye-streets of the Strand was continuous, for although the population of London was only half of what it is now, the number of gay ladies seemed double.2

  They were to be found in brothels and in dancing-rooms, in pleasure gardens and in the streets. They could be met through the offices of procuresses, in ‘introducing houses’ patronized by the ‘many wealthy, indolent, sensual men of London’ who, in Acton’s words, ‘obtained for their money a superior class of prostitute … presented to them as maid, wife or widow’. They could be visited in numerous ‘accommodation houses’, rooms above coffee-houses, taverns and shops which could be rented for an hour or so ‘for the most part openly, or when not exactly so, on exhibition of a slight apology for travelling baggage … Their tariffs are various, and the accommodation afforded ranges between luxury and the squalor of those ambiguous dens, half brothel and half lodging-house, whose inhabitants pay their twopence nightly.’ The more expensive rooms cost about 5s in the 1850s, but by the 1870s the cost had risen to 10s or more in the West End. For this, as one habitué of such places testified, a customer could expect ‘red curtains, looking-glasses, wax lights, clean linen, a huge chair, a large bed, and a cheval glass, large enough for the biggest couple to be reflected in’.3

  The anonymous author of the eleven volumes of sexual memoirs entitled My Secret Life, which has been described by Steven Marcus as ‘the most important document of its kind about Victorian England’, estimated the income of one of the most fashionable courtesans of his acquaintance as being up to £70 a week on which she kept ‘several servants and a brougham’. He himself, however, though rich enough, declined to pay her prices, believing that there was ‘wonderfully little difference between the woman you have for five shillings and the one you pay five pounds, excepting in the silk, linen and manners’. In his youth in the 1840s and 1850s

  a sovereign would get any woman and ten shillings as nice a one as you needed. Two good furnished rooms near the Clubs could be had by women for from fifteen to twenty shillings per week, a handsome silk dress for five or ten pounds, and other things in proportion. So cunt was a more reasonable article than it is now [about 1880], and I got quite nice girls at from five to ten shillings a poke, and had several in their own rooms, but sometimes half a crown extra for a room elsewhere. [One of them] was young, handsome, well made, and in the Haymarket would now get anything from one to five pounds; yet I had her several times for three or four shillings a time.

  Most prostitutes were young, many of them being driven to the life they led, so Acton said, by ‘cruel biting poverty’ and a large proportion of them returning ‘sooner or later to a more or less regular course of life’. Thousands were under thirteen which was, until 1885, when it was raised to sixteen, the age of consent. Some were under ten. The author of My Secret Life, who confessed to having paid
£200 for a little virgin when he was inexperienced in such matters, once violated a ten-year-old girl, reflecting afterwards that he might ‘as well have the broaching of a little cunt, and pay for it, as let a coster lad have it for nothing’. After all, as the little orphan girl’s ‘aunt’ told him, ‘she had taken charge of her and prevented her going to the workhouse. She was in difficulties, she must live, the child would be sure to have it done to her some day. Why not make a little money by her? Someone else would if she did not. So spoke the fat, middle-aged woman.’

  Such girls were easily supplied and fulfilled a constant and eager demand, so a former brothel-keeper told Stead:

  A keeper who knows his business has his eyes open in all directions. His stock of girls is constantly getting used up, and needs replenishing, and he has to be on the alert for lively ‘marks’ to keep up the reputation of his house.

  The getting of fresh girls … is easy enough. I have gone and courted girls in the country under all kinds of disguises, occasionally assuming the dress of a parson … and got them in my power to please a good customer … I bring her up, take her here and there giving her plenty to eat and drink, especially drink … I contrive it so that she loses her last train … I offer her nice lodgings for the night … My client gets his maid …

  Another very simple mode of supplying maids is breeding them. Many women who are on the streets have female children. They are worth keeping … I know a couple of very fine little girls now who will be sold before long. They are bred and trained for the life. They must take the first step sometime, and it is bad business not to make as much out of that as possible. Drunken parents often sell their children to brothel-keepers. In the East End you can always pick up as many fresh girls as you want.

  Young children could also be acquired from women who masqueraded as foster-parents or baby-farmers but who were, in fact, professional infanticides or dealers in children. One of them, who advertised her adoption agency in the newspapers, charged £5 for her services which included ‘everything’. When she was arrested several children, dying of starvation, were found in her house as well as numerous pawn tickets for their clothing. She was hanged in 1870; but other similar agencies continued in business and child abuse remained a horrifying problem, despite the efforts of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children which was founded in 1889.4

  It was always easy to find young girls who, while indignantly denying that they were ‘gay’, were prepared to act as prostitutes occasionally.

  ‘How long have you been gay?’ [one of these girls, dressed like the child of ‘a decent mechanic’, was asked by a man who had picked her up in the Strand one day and taken her to a bawdy house].

  ‘I ain’t gay,’ said she, astonished.

  ‘Yes you are.’

  ‘No I ain’t.’

  ‘You let men fuck you, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but I ain’t gay.’

  ‘What do you call gay?’

  ‘Why the gals who come out regular of a night, dressed up, and gets their living by it.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘No, Mother keeps me.’

  ‘What is your father?’

  ‘Got none. He’s dead three months back. Mother works and keeps us. She’s a charwoman, and goes out on odd jobs.’

  ‘Don’t you work?’

  ‘Not now,’ said she in a confused way. ‘Mother does not want me to. I take care of the others.’

  ‘What others?’

  ‘The young ones … But what do you ask me all this for?’

  ‘Only for amusement. Then you are in mourning for your father?’

  ‘Yes, it’s shabby ain’t it? I wish I could have nice clothes. I’ve got nice boots, ain’t they?’ – cocking up one leg – ‘a lady gived ’em me when father died. They are my best.’

  ‘Are you often in the Strand?’

  ‘I do if mother’s out for the day.’

  ‘Does she know you are out?’

  ‘Bless you, no. She’d beat me if she knew. When she be out I locks them up and takes the key and then I goes back to them …’

  ‘They may set fire to themselves.’

  ‘There ain’t no fire.’

  ‘What do you do with yourself all day?’

  ‘I washes them. I give them food if we’ve got any, then washes myself. Then I looks out the winder.’

  ‘Wash yourself?’

  ‘Yes, I washes from head to foot, allus.’

  ‘Have you a tub?’

  ‘No, we’ve only got a pail and a bowl, but I’m beautiful clean … I buy things to eat (she went on in answer to a question as to how she spent the money men paid her). I can’t eat what mother gives us. She’d give us more, but she can’t. So I buy foods, and gives the others what mother gives me … If mother’s there I eat some. Sometimes we have only gruel and salt …’

  ‘What do you like?’

  ‘Pies and sausage rolls,’ says the girl, smacking her lips and laughing. ‘Oh, my eye, ain’t they prime – oh!’

  ‘That’s what you went gay for?’

  ‘I’m not gay.’

  ‘Well what you let men fuck you for?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sausage rolls?’

  ‘Yes. Meat pies and pastry, too.’5

  This girl seemed happy enough; and so did many other so-called ‘dolly-mops’ and prostitutes interviewed by Henry Mayhew and his colleagues. ‘I am not tired of what I am doing,’ one of them, the twenty-three-year-old daughter of a tradesman from Yarmouth, said. ‘I rather like it. I have all I want … What do you think will become of me? What an absurd question! I could marry to-morrow if I liked.’6

  How did I come to take this sort of life [another girl said breezily]. Well, I’ll tell yer … It’s easy to tell. I was a servant gal away down in Birmingham. I was tired of workin’ and slavin’ to make a livin’, and gettin’ a bad one at that! What o’ five pun’ a year and yer grub, I’d sooner starve I would! After a bit I went to Coventry, cut Brummagem, as we calls it in those parts, and took up with the soldiers as was quartered there. I soon got tired of them. Soldiers is good – soldiers is – to walk with and that, but they don’t pay; cos why, they ain’t got no money. So I says I’ll go to London and I did. I soon found my level there … One week with another I makes nearer on four pounds nor three – sometimes five. I ’ave done eight and ten … And now I think I’ll be off. Good night to yer.7

  There were, however, many girls whose misery was pitiable. One of them, a good-looking girl of sixteen whose hands were swollen with cold, told her pathetic story. She had been a maidservant in the house of a tradesman whose wife beat her cruelly ‘with sticks as well as with her hands’. She ran away and took shelter in a lodging-house where she stayed for about three months, living on the three shillings she had saved and the money she was given when she pawned her best clothes. When all her money was gone she became the mistress of a fifteen-year-old pickpocket. She herself at that time was twelve. One day her young lover was arrested and sent to prison; and she was sorry because he had been kind to her, although she was ‘made ill through him’. She broke some windows in St Paul’s Churchyard so that she could get into prison and be cured of her disease. She was ‘scolded very much in the Compter on account of the state [she] was in, being so young’. When she was released she was given 2S 6d; but this did not last long, and she was ‘forced to go into the streets for a living’.

  I continued walking the streets for three years [she went on] sometimes making a good deal of money, sometimes none, feasting one day and starving the next … I was never happy all the time, but I could get no character and could not get out of the life. I lodged all this time at a lodging house in Kent Street. They were all thieves and bad girls … The beds were horrid filthy and full of vermin. There was very wicked carryings-on. We lay packed on a full night, a dozen boys and girls squeezed into one bed … I can’t go into all the particulars, but whatever could take place between boys and girls d
id take place … I am sorry to say I took part in these bad ways myself … Some boys and girls slept without any clothes and would dance about the room that way … Wicked as I was, I felt ashamed …

  At three years’ end I stole a piece of beef from a butcher. I did it to get into prison. I was sick of the life I was leading, and didn’t know how to get out of it … When I got out I threatened to break windows again. I did that to get into prison again … and thought I would stick to prison rather than go back to such a life. I got six months for threatening. When I got out I broke a lamp next morning for the same purpose and had a fortnight. That was the last time I was in prison. I have since been leading the same life as I told you of and lodging at the same houses, and seeing the same goings on. I hate such a life now more than ever. I am willing to do any work that I can in washing and cleaning …8