"The
year is 1763. One woman in five makes a living selling sex.” So opens ITV
Encore’s latest period drama; Harlots (Hulu in the US). Created by Alison
Newman and Moira Buffini and directed by Coky Giedroyc, the eight-part drama
follows the rising fortunes of London bawd, Margaret Wells (Samantha Morton)
and her daughters, Charlotte (Jessica Brown Findlay) and Lucy (Eloise Smyth). Harlots
has gone beyond simply dusting off the tit crushing corsets and has deftly
woven historical facts into the warp and weft of this bloomer dropping, gin
swilling, cinematic trupenny upright, and I love it. But, I'm not here to tell
you how much fun the show is (and it really is!) I'm here for the history.
Harlots tells a hell of a story, but there is more to consider here than a
corseted dose of how’s your father in a sepia filter. That Harlots so clearly
uses historical truth to embellish the show is what really piques my interest.
Numbers
We’ll
start with that statistic “The year is 1763. One woman in five makes a living
selling sex.” The simple truth is that we do not have accurate estimates for
the numbers of sex workers in eighteenth-century Britain (or anywhere else) for
several reasons. Sex workers were, and still are, a marginalised, criminalised
community and ran the risk of being publicly shamed, punished and even deported
if identified; subsequently, few people were open enough about selling sex to
collect accurate data. The eighteenth century lexicon did not include words
such as ‘sex worker’, but rather used words such as whore, harlot, strumpet or
lewd woman. The definition of each of these terms covered women selling sex to
those who had sex outside of marriage, or lived with a man they were not
married too; so when number of whores are being recorded, it does not
necessarily men someone who sold sex for a living. Quantitative data analysis
around sex work in the eighteenth century was far closer to what we could
politely call ‘guess work’, than anything that would pass peer review today.
However, this did not stop people from having a damn good guess.
In 1758,
Saunders Welch, a Justice of the Peace for both the County of Middlesex and the
City and Liberty of Westminster, published A Proposal to render effectual a
Plan, To remove the Nuisance of Common Prostitutes from the Streets of this
Metropolis and conservatively estimated there were some 3000 women who made
their living selling sex in the capital. When Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz
visited London in 1789, he estimated there were 30,000 ladies of pleasure
living in the district of Marylebone alone (Archenholz, 1789). Michael Ryan,
author of Prostitution in London (1839), estimated that by 1802 there were
80,000 sex workers and some 5000 brothels in London (Ryan, 1839). In 1795,
police magistrate Patrick Colquhorn calculated there were 50,000 sex workers in
London – which had a population of around 730,000. Viewing Colquhorn's data as
the most reliable, modern historian Dan Cruickshank suggests that sexually
active women will account for around 250,000 of that figure, which roughly
equates to one in five women selling sex in Georgian London (Cruickshank,
2010).
As you
can see, estimates differ wildly and really the only thing we can say with some
certainty is there were more than a few women on the game in eighteenth-century
London. But, it shouldn’t come as any kind of surprise that so many women sold
sex to earn a crust. Historically, men have always held the money and the power
and there was only three ways a woman could access some of that for herself;
she could inherit it, she could marry it, or she could shag it. Far from being
a last desperate resort, as perilous as it was, sex work could offer a decent
income, independence and social advancement in a deeply patriarchal world that
barred women from positions of power. Of course, women could try to earn an
income as a seamstress or some kind of domestic worker, but this was a long time
before Destiny’s Child asked independent women to ‘throw their hands up’;
working in the eighteenth century (especially for women) was damn tough. The
eighteenth-century wage gap was not so much a gap as a vast, unforgiving ravine
with horny sharks at the bottom; and the only kind of employment rights on
offer was the right to work yourself to death (preferably quietly and without
making a mess.) But, a sex worker could make serious cash, and there were many
honeys makin' money.
If a
lowly female domestic servant could expect a wage of around £2 - 4 a year (with
accommodation and food), a sex worker could earn that in one night
(Oldbaileyonline.org, 2017). Of course, there was no standard charge for sexual
services, and there were kept mistresses who could wouldn't get into bed for
less than a hundred guineas (Casonova recorded that Kitty Fisher once ate a
thousand guinea note on a slice of bread and butter). But, there were also many
destitute people who would exchange sex for food. In 1762, James Boswell walked
through London and recorded in his diary that he was "surrounded with
numbers of free-hearted ladies of all kinds: from the splendid Madam at fifty
guineas a night, down to the civil nymph with white-thread stockings tramps
along the Strand and will resign her engaging person to Honour for a pint of
wine and a shilling’ (Boswell, 1762).
The
amount charged by the sex workers featured in Harris’s List varies, but
averages at around one guinea per customer, which is slightly over £1 (12 pence
to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound and a guineas was worth 21
shillings.) Despite significant risks to health and well-being, many people
sought out sex work and the wealth it promised.
The
eighteenth-century literary blockbuster, Harris’s List (1757 to 1795) is
featured in the opening scenes of Harlots. Harris’s List was an annual almanac
of London sex workers. A forerunner to TripAdvisor, the list detailed the
appearance, skills, and prices of up to two hundred women selling sex in the
capital. One source I heartily recommmend if you want to learn more about the
list is Matthew Sangster's research project for "Romantic London".
Sangster has created an incredible resource in an online map of Harris's List,
using the addresses provided in the 1788 edition here. You can see exactly
where these women lived in London, as well as read their description in the
list; it's fabulous.
The list
seems to have been the result of a collaboration between an Irish Grub Street
hack and poet, Sam Derrick, and London Pimp, Jack Harris. Only nine known
volumes of the list survived today (1761, 1764, 1773, 1774, 1779, 1788, 1789,
1790 and 1793), and they are scattered throughout various archives around the
world. There have been a handful of reprints, but until 2005, if you wanted to
see the list, an appointment at an archive and a pair of white gloves would
have been required. It wasn’t until historian Hallie Rubenhold undertook the
herculean task of researching and editing the list in her publication The
Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack and the extraordinary story of
"Harris' List" (2005), that the list was dusted off and shown to the
public anew. Rubenhold and her work remain the leading authority in the study
of the list, and this article is likewise indebted; so, thanks Hallie!
As you
may well imagine, Harris’s List was a hugely popular work. As well as being a
practical resource, the list also provided titilation. As Delinger notes, the
list functions in two ways: ‘names, addresses, and prices all point to their
practical use, while the lush descriptions of women also function as soft-core
pornography’ (Denlinger, 2002). The list itself straddles the boundaries of
fact and fiction; and we will never be able to attest to its accuracy; were
Betsy Miles’s breasts ‘of immense size’? Was Nelly Anderson truly a ‘squat,
swarthy round faced wench’? Were Miss Simms ‘low countries’ like ‘a well-made
boot’? (Rubenhold, 2005). We will never know.
Episode
one of Harlots opens with an excited group of young women anxiously awaiting
their reviews, and with good reason; Harris’s List could make or break the
fortune of London’s sex workers. In episode one, Emily Lacey’s favourable
review as ‘young votary of Venus’ allows her to leave Covent Garden and
approach an elite brothel in Golden Square to seek a better position. Like
every profession, sex work was (and still is) densely layered, and a favourable
review would allow a girl to command more money, richer clients and go up in
the world. A bad review, or an accusation of carrying the pox (like Miss Young
of Cumberland Court, who is described as spreading ‘her contaminated carcass on
the town’), would see business dry up quicker than sawdust on sick.
Despite
Jack Harris’s narrative style of a cheeky scamp about town, sampling the delights
of the city at random, the selection process was highly competitive; Harris
knew the marketing value of his list. The memoirs of Fanny Murray, one of the
most celebrated eighteenth-century courtesans, provides valuable insight into
the processes. Fanny had to apply to Harris to have her name ‘enrolled upon his
parchment list’. She then had to be interviewed, submit to a medical
examination, agree give Harris a fifth of the money she earned and sign a
contract that stipulated she must forfeit £20 to Harris if she is found to have
lied about her health during the examination (Memoirs, 1759). Expensive this
certainly may have been, but it could be a worthwhile investment, Harris’s List
helped to launch the careers of several London’s top courtesans; Fanny Murray,
Lucy Cooper and Charlotte Hayes.
Cast of
Characters
Harlots
has an impressive cast of characters and whilst the plot is fiction, many of
the characters are impressions and composites of real lives lived on the
fringes of the Georgian underworld. In an interview with The Radio Times,
Alison Newman is quoted as saying when they ‘were dreaming up Charlotte Wells
(Jessica Brown Findlay), they were thinking about Kitty Fisher’ (Griffiths,
2017). Whilst Kitty Fisher is a fascinating character (you can read more about
her here), Charlotte Wells is clearly based on one of the most notorious and
successful eighteenth-century courtesans turned madam, Charlotte Hayes.
Charlotte Hayes is favourably described in the 1761 edition of Harris’s List.
"Were
we to enter into an exact description of this celebrated Thais; that is, were
we to describe each limb and feature a party, they would not appear so well as
taken altogether, in which we must acknowledge her very pleasing; and in our
eye (and sure nobody can better tell what is what) she is as desirable as
ever". (Harris, 1761)
Despite
a single entry in the list, a much fuller account of Charlotte’s life is found
in another eighteenth-century text, Nocturnal Revels (1779), which you can read
at this link. The most comprehensive studies of Charlotte’s life are to be
found in Rubenhold’s The Covent Garden Ladies (2005), Dan Cruickshank’s A
Secret History of Georgian London (2010) and Fergus Linnane’s Madams: Bawds and
Brothel Keepers of London (2011). But, it is Rubenhold's biography of Charlotte
that is most clearly expressed in Harlots.
Charlotte
clawed her way up from desperate poverty to become one the most successful
bawds in London, and Madam of the King’s Place brothel. When she died in 1813,
she had amassed a fortune of over £20,000, achieved celebrity status and
hobnobbed with royalty; not bad for a girl from the gutter. Rubenhold’s
biography of Charlotte suggests she was the daughter of another London bawd,
Elizabeth Ward (who is on record in 1754, accusing Ann Smith of stealing
clothing from her.) Rubenhold’s details how Elizabeth Ward bred Charlotte up
for a life on the town and eventually auctioned off her daughter’s virginity to
the highest bidder, which would have proved ‘one of her mother’s greatest business
transactions’ (Rubenhold, 2005). This narrative is certainly played out by
Harlots, where Charlotte’s mother, Margaret Wells, is shown taking ‘sealed
bids’ for her youngest daughter’s virginity (which she sells twice), just as
she did for Charlotte’s some years earlier (Harlots, 2017). Alas, I do not have
access to the sources that confirms Elizabeth Ward was Charlotte Hayes’ mother.
Nocturnal Revels seems to suggest that Ward was Charlotte’s madam, rather than
mother, and ‘initiated her all the mysteries of a Tally-Women’ (Revels, 1779).
But, Nocturnal Revels provides explicit details about the selling of virginity
several times over, and quotes Charlotte herself as saying a virginity is ‘as
easily made as a pudding’ (Revels, 1779). However, rather than her mother
selling her virginity, here Charlotte reveals she had sold her own ‘thousands
of times’ (Revels, 1779).
Whomever
Charlotte’s mother was, she managed to secure herself a very rich ‘keeper’ in
Robert 'Beau' Tracy. Just like in Harlots, Charlotte financially drained her
patron and was ‘notoriously unfaithful to him’ (Revels, 1779). When Tracey died
Charlotte ended up in debtor’s prison. It was here that she met and fell in
love with an Irish sedan-chairman, Dennis O’Kelly (Daniel Marney in Harlots).
According to O’Kelly’s memoirs, before he met Charlotte, he had earned
additional income by having sex with wealthy women who hired his chair, also
seen in Harlots (O'Kelly, 1788). And it seems that whilst in prison together,
Charlotte also called upon Mr O’Kelly’s services. She was soon ‘devoted to
him’, and he in turn was ‘devoted not only to her person, but to her purse’
(O’Kelly, 1788). Whilst I do not know how this will play out in the show, the
various historical texts tell is that the real life Charlotte’s patronage
allowed O’Kelly to quit his job as a bar tender and sedan chair carrier and
become a kept man. O’Kelly began calling himself ‘Count’ and after Charlotte
had liquidated his debts, he became the owner of the most famous racehorse in Britain,
Eclipse. He and Charlotte went on to open the exclusive brothel, King’s Place.
A satirical list of services and prices available at Kings are given in Revels,
and it gives some idea of just how lucrative this business could be.
Mary
Cooper, who is found dying of the pox in an alleyway in episode two of Harlots,
seems to be based on Lucy Cooper, a courtesan who really did blaze her way
through the ranks and beds of the London elite. Lucy’s life is detailed
alongside Charlotte’s in Nocturnal Revels, and a description of both Lucy and
Charlotte is found in the 1761 edition of Harris’s List; both women achieved
fame and fortune, but Lucy did not have the business acumen of Charlotte and
failed to save for the inevitable rainy day. In Harlots, Mary Cooper is
celebrated for her sexual prowess, street smarts and dazzling beauty.
"Mary
Cooper, Mary Cooper.
She's
had every Lord and Trooper
Mary
Cooper, Mary Cooper
Leaves
her lovers in a stupor
Ridin'
high, no man can dupe her
London's
Venus, Mary Cooper!"
The real
Lucy Cooper also had a reputation for debauchery and songs were sung about her
too.
"Must
Lucy Cooper bear the bell
And give
herself all the airs?
Must
that damnation bitch of hell
Be
hough’d by Knights and Squires?
Has she
a better cunt than I
Of nut
brown hairs more full?
That all
mankind with do her lye
Whilst I
have scarce a cull?"
(The
Gentleman's bottle companion, 1768)
Whilst
Mary Cooper dies of syphilis in Harlots, Lucy Cooper lived a life of excess and
saw her wealthy, elderly protectors die one by one. Finding herself grog
blossomed, partied out and the wrong side of thirty-five, Lucy was unable to
replace them. Having set nothing aside from her heyday, Lucy could not meet her
debts and soon found herself destitute and in debtor’s jail. She died in
squalid poverty in 1772, just four years after being immortalised in song as
the woman who ‘all mankind’ wanted to lie with.
Nancy
Birch, the bawd who birches her culls bloody in Harlots also has a real life
counterpart in Ms Nancy Burroughs of Drury Lane, who appears in the 1789
edition of Harris’s List. This Nancy was said to use ‘more birch rods in a week
than Westminster school in a twelvemonth’ (Harris’s List, 1789). Other women
specialising in BDSM that appear in the list include Miss Lee of Soho who is
‘constantly visited of amateurs of birch discipline’, and Mrs Macatney who birches
young girls for the amusing of her paying customers, both of whom appear in the
1793 edition.
Harriet
Lennox (Pippa Bennett-Warner) and Violet Cross (Rosalind Eleazar) are both
black sex workers in Harlots and both have real life counterparts. Moira Buffini
revelled that Violet was based on a thief who appears in the Old Bailey
records, a black woman called Ann Duck who was hung for highway robbery in
1744; “we sort of based Violet on her" (Griffiths, 2017). Harriet bears
more than a striking resemblance to the real life story of ‘Black Harriot’.
Harriot was brought to Jamaica as a slave, where British born plantation owner,
William Lewis, fell in love with her and they married. Upon moving back to
England, Harriot learnt all the airs and graces of high society, but when Lewis
suddenly died, she found herself in a desperate situation. However, Harriot
decided to take this lying down – quite literally; she turned to sex work and
eventually opened her own establishment, becoming the only black madam in London
(Arnold, 2010).
Trade in
Virgins
Sex work
is a highly complex experience that resists simple stereotypes; sex work in the
eighteenth century was no different. There was a dark side and for all the
celebrated grande horizontals, when there is that much money at stake, many
people were chewed up and spat out by the cities’ never ending demand for
flesh. Harlots depicts the eighteenth-century sexual obsession with virgins; as
Lady Repton quips in episode one at the auctioning of Lucy Wells’s virginity, ‘my
husband loves a hymen’. In Nocturnal Revels, Charlotte Hayes discusses how easy
it is to fake a virginity, we also see this trick in Fanny Hill where Fanny is
instructed in how to fake a maidenhead;
"In
each of the head bed-posts, just above where the bedsteads are inserted into
them, there was a small drawer, so artfully adapted to the mouldings of the
timber-work, that it might have escaped even the most curious search: which
drawers were easily opened or shut by the touch of a spring, and were fitted
each with a shallow glass tumbler, full of a prepared fluid blood, in which lay
soaked, for ready use, a sponge, that required no more than gently reaching the
hand to it, taking it out and properly squeezing between the thighs, when it
yelded a great deal more of the red liquid than would save a girl's
honour". (Cleland, 1749)
This
tells us two things; firstly, women have been faking things in the bedroom for
a long time; secondly, there was such a demand for virgins, knowing how to pass
yourself off as an innocent was a staple of any self-respecting harlot’s
repertoire. But, for every virginity faked, there were real girls offered up
for sale.
William
Hogarth’s 1732 A Harlot's Progress (a series of engravings) depicts a young
Moll Hackabout who arrives in London fresh from the country, only to be tricked
into prostitution by the cunning bawd, Elizabeth Needham. (In 1731 Mother Needham
was convicted of keeping a disorderly house and sentenced to be pilloried, she
did not survive the experience.) The madam seeking out young girls and tricking
them is also seen in Harlots when Lydia Quigley stalks registry offices and
stage coaches to find virgins to offer up to well-paying clients.
Nocturnal
Revels details how Charlotte Hayes procured an endless supply of new ‘nuns’ for
her ‘cloister’. Just as Lydia Quigley did in Harlots, Charlotte would dress in
a ‘plain and simple manner’ and approach employment offices, searching for any
young girl who was seeking domestic work. Charlotte would then tell her she
required a maid for her mistress and offer ‘very handsome’ wages. The
unsuspecting victim would be taken to a house, plied with drink and be put to
bed, only to wake in the night being raped by whomever had paid Charlotte for a
virgin. Revels tells us after such a traumatic experience, the victim would be
given a few guineas and removed to the ‘nunnery’ in King’s Place ‘in order to
make room for a new victim, who is to be sacrificed in the like manner’ (Revels,
1779). When victims could not be procured in this way, Charlotte and other
bawds placed advertisements, like the one opposite, in newspapers to bring the
girls to them.
Hellfire
Clubs
In
Harlots, Lydia Quigley is supplying virgins to an anonymous, but aristocratic
and powerful group of men; it is later revealed these men are murdering these
girls. The eighteenth century saw the rise of the Hellfire Clubs across Britain
and Ireland. These were exclusive, secretive clubs for wealthy libertines who
met to engage in ‘the most impious and blasphemous Manner, insult the most
sacred Principles of Holy Religion, affront Almighty God himself, and corrupt
the Minds and Morals of one another’ (Gordon, 1721). The clubs were shrouded in
mystery and historians have long tried to understand exactly what happened
there. Rumours about Satanic abuse of women, devil worship and debauched
behaviour circulated around the clubs from the beginning. Did these rich men
really deflower virgins and worship the devil, or was it simply as case of, as
Evelyn Lord suggests, ‘wealthy men with too much time and licence on their
hands, wanting to assert their masculinity’ (Lord, 2010). The most notorious
club was formed in 1746 by Sir Francis Dashwood with the motto "Fais ce
que tu voudrais" (Do as you will). Lord Sandwich, Lord Bute, the Duke of
Queensbury, the Prince of Wales and even Benjamin Franklin were all rumoured to
be members (Arnold, 2010). Whist we will probably never know exactly what
happened there, the public have always been willing to believe the very worst
of them; including the kidnap and rape of virgins. It seems the secretive world
of the Hellfire Clubs provided inspiration for the elite group of aristocrats
seeking out and murdering virgins in Harlots.
Harlots
is a delicious peep up the skirt of the eighteenth-century sex trade. Far from
being a make believe world, here fact and fiction lie side by side in a sweaty
bed, smoking a post-coital cigarette and asking ‘how was it for you?’ The lives
held up here are nods to history, but we must remember that the lives of the
infamous, people like Charlotte Hayes, Black Harriot and Lucy Cooper, have
always been subject to sensationalism. What we know about them is left to us
through a series of texts that were designed to inflame the senses and have us
clutching our pearls whilst eagerly turning the page for more. For me, the most
fun part of Harlots are the background details; the reusable condoms, the women
squatting over basins to wash themselves between clients, the perils of pregnancy,
butter as lubrication, and the Foundling Hospital - all documented facts about
sex in the eighteenth century. (If you would like to read more about birth
control and abortion in the eighteenth century, you can read another article I
wrote here.) I would urge you to enjoy Harlots for the fantastic romp in the
hay it is, and view its reference to historical facts as the delicious
sprinkles on top. But, remember a little history can be a dangerous thing and
must not be understood to be the full picture. If you want to learn more about
sex work in the eighteenth century, I cannot recommend Dan Cruickshank’s Secret
History, or Rubenhold’s Covent Garden Ladies enough. And once you have read
that, please read about current sex workers and sex worker rights. Historical
sex work can be bawdy fun because it allows us to look at a distance and to
tell fun stories, but always remember this is the history and heritage of sex
work today, and that such stories really do matter to the people fighting the
same systems today.
‘’I am
Sunk in Lust and Lechery ‘’ : The History behind ITV’s Encore ‘’Harlots’’. By Kate
Lister. Whores of Yore, May 24, 2017.
People
think I’m obsessed with syphilis, and maybe I am. But it’s only because of my
recent indoctrination into 18th-century history by aficionados of the period,
such as Lucy Inglis, Adrian Teal and Rob Lucas.
I can’t read 10 pages of a medical casebook without coming across a
reference to lues venerea. By the end of the century, London was literally
crawling with the pox.
And it’s
no surprise. Sexual promiscuity was as much a part of Georgian England as were
powdered wigs and opium. For a few pennies, a gentleman could pick up Harris’s
List of Covent Garden Ladies, or Man of Pleasure’s Kalendar—a pocket guide to
London’s prostitutes published annually starting in 1771—and peruse it as he
might do a fine wine list.
For
three guineas, a man could partake in the pleasures provided by Miss L—st—r at
No. 6 Union Street, whose ‘neighbouring hills [are] full ripe for manual
pressure, firm, and elastic, and heave at every touch.’ If three guineas were too much, one could
always spend a third of that for a night with Miss H—ll—nd at No. 2 York
Street, who, ‘tho’ only seventeen and short, is very fat and corpulent…a luscious
treat to the voluptuary.’ And for those
who fancied a woman ‘rather above the common height’, they could visit Miss S—ms
at No. 82 Queen Ann’s Street East, who frequently attracted lovers of a
‘diminutive size’ who loved ‘surmounting such a fine, tall woman.’
The guidebook
wasn’t all slap and tickle, though. Hidden within these pages were warnings
about the dangers of sleeping with diseased prostitutes. Military men were cautioned against Matilda
Johnson, since ‘it is thought by some experienced officers, that her citadel is
in danger, on account of a quantity of fiery combustible matter which is lodged
in the covered way.’ Some warnings were not so subtle (or hilarious). The
guidebook alerts its readers to Miss Young, who had ‘very lately had the folly
and wickedness to leave a certain hospital, before the cure for a certain
distemper which she had was completed.’ The book ominously adds that she has
‘thrown her contaminated carcass on the town again.’
Yes,
syphilis was ubiquitous in 18th-century London. Aside from abstaining or
entering into a monogamous relationship with a healthy partner, there was very
little one could do to protect oneself from the pox. Condoms, though available
during this period, were rarely employed. When used, they were frequently
reused multiple times, defeating their purpose as safeguards against
contamination.
That
said, the telltale signs of the disease could often be seen on those suffering
from the pox, allowing the astute observer to steer clear of infected persons.
In this wax moulage by the talented
artist, Nicole Antebi, you can see the effects of the disease on the face and
mouth. Blemishes such as these came to be associated with prostitution.
Georgian women went to great lengths to cover these marks with ‘beauty spots’
made of fine black velvet, or mouse skin.
Those
who suffered from the pox often turned to surgeons for help. Before the
discovery of penicillin, syphilis was an incurable (and ultimately fatal)
disease. The longer it went on, the worse the symptoms became. In addition to
unsightly skin ulcers like the ones mentioned above, sufferers could experience
paralysis, blindness, dementia and ‘saddle nose‘, a grotesque deformity which
occurs when the bridge of the nose caves into the face.
Many
treatments involved the use of mercury, which could be administered in the form
of calomel (mercury chloride), an ointment, a steam bath or pill.
Unfortunately, the side effects could be as painful and terrifying as the
disease itself (see illustration, right, of patient suffering from over-exposure
to mercury). Many patients who underwent such treatments suffered from
extensive tooth loss, ulcerations and neurological damage. In many cases,
people died from mercury poisoning. Indeed, it’s hard to fault Miss Young for
throwing her ‘contaminated carcass on the town again’ after refusing to
continue treatment that most likely included mercury.
Prostitutes
bore the brunt of it when it came to syphilis in Georgian London. Yet despite
the dangers, women entered into the profession at an astonishing rate. An
estimated 1 in 5 women were ‘Ladies of the Night’ during this period. Some
entered the sex trade as young as 12 years of age; and many could expect to make
as much as £400 per year.
Still,
the financial advantages of prostitution meant little if one contracted the
deadly disease. The two syphilitic women mentioned above did not appear in
later editions of Harris’s List. Their fates were sealed once their secrets had
been exposed. No doubt countless other women suffered the same future after
they became infected, losing not only their livelihoods, but also their lives
to this dreadful epidemic.
Am I
obsessed with syphilis? Yes. But for good reason!.
In the
late 18th century, one in five Londoners contracted syphilis by their mid-30s,
according to a fascinating (if you enjoy reading about the history of medicine,
as I do) paper published online this week in the journal Economic History
Review.
Using
data painstakingly collected from the archived admission records of London’s
hospitals and workhouse infirmaries, the paper’s authors — historians Simon
Szreter of Cambridge University in the U.K. and Kevin Seina of Trent University
in Canada — estimate that 2,807 Londoners were being treated annually for
syphilis in the “foul” (venereal disease) wards of those facilities in the
1770s.
That’s
twice as many people as were being treated for syphilis in the much smaller
English city of Chester during that period and about 25 times more than as were
being treated in rural areas of England and Wales.
Based on
those 2,807 cases, Szreter and Seina estimate (conservatively) that 20 percent
of Londoners during the Georgian era could expect to have at least one bout of
syphilis by their 35th birthday.
Yet
syphilis was just part of the considerable venereal disease problem in
18th-century London. “A far greater number would have contracted gonorrhea or
chlamydia than contracted syphilis in this period,” the historians point out.
No one
who has read the surviving diaries of James Boswell (1740-1795), the biographer
of the great English writer and wit Samuel Johnson, will be surprised by the
findings in this paper. In his diaries, Boswell recounts no less than 19
episodes of venereal disease between 1760 (when he was 20) and 1786.
“Our
findings suggest that Boswell’s London fully deserves its historical
reputation,” says Szreter in a released statement. “The city had an astonishingly
high incidence of STIs at that time. It no longer seems unreasonable to suggest
that a majority of those living in London while young adults in this period
contracted an STI at some point in their lives.”
“In an
age before prophylaxis or effective treatments, here was a fast-growing city
with a continuous influx of young adults, many struggling financially,” he
adds. “Georgian London was extremely vulnerable to epidemic STI infections
rates on this scale.”
Georgians
called syphilis “the pox,” while gonorrhea was known as “the clap.” Both tended
to be lumped together as a single disease: “venereal distemper.” The first
effective treatment for syphilis was not discovered until 1910, so Georgians
who developed the disease had no real hope of recovery, although they didn’t
know that at the time, as Szreter and Siena explain:
‘’On
experiencing initial signs of discomfort, such as a rash or pain in urination,
most hoped it was just ‘the clap’ and would have begun by self-medicating for
many weeks with various pills and potions — there was certainly a large market
for these.
However,
a substantial proportion would find that this failed to alleviate symptoms,
which worsened, because the delayed secondary stage of syphilitic infection,
when it arrives, typically produces debilitating pain and fevers lasting weeks
and even months, which could not be ignored. Although they cursed their luck
for getting the pox, most contemporaries believed that there was available to
them a reliable, permanent cure. This was to submit to the rigours of mercury
salivation treatment.’’
The idea
behind the mercury treatment was to get the patient to excessively salivate,
which was thought to help get rid of the impurities causing the disease. The
initial administration of the mercury often occurred in a hospital, where
patients typically stayed for a minimum of five weeks. Mercury, however, is a
poison, so the treatment led to severe side effects, including painful mouth
ulcers, loss of teeth, kidney failure and often death.
Despite
doing more harm than healing, mercury treatments were administered for weeks,
months and years, a factor reflected in a well-known Georgian saying: “A night
with Venus, and a lifetime with mercury.”
As
Szreter and Seina emphasize, the incidence of syphilis and other STIs in
18th-century London was particularly high among “young, impoverished, mostly
unmarried women, either using commercial sex to support themselves financially
or in situations that rendered them vulnerable to sexual predation and assault
like domestic service.”
Indeed,
Boswell’s STIs were the result of frequent encounters with London’s sex
workers.
It’s not
surprising, therefore, that financially established men like Boswell also had a
high incidence of STIs. The other group of men with a high incident rate were
young, unmarried laborers who had migrated to London from other areas of
Britain and who lived on the margins of the city’s economy.
Both men
and women who could not afford treatments could usually get them for free at
London’s specialist hospitals and infirmaries, Szreter and Siena point out.
This
look at syphilis in the 18th century has ramifications beyond simple historical
curiosity.
“Syphilis
and other STIs can have a very significant effect on morbidity and mortality
and also on fertility,” says Szreter. “So infection rates represent a serious
gap in our historical knowledge, with significant implications for health, for
demography and therefore for economic history.”
“Understanding
infection rates is also a crucial way to access one of the most private, and
therefore historically hidden, of human activities, sexual practices and
behaviours,” he adds.
One in
five Londoners had syphilis by age 35 in the late 18th century, historians
estimate. By Susan Perry. Minnpost ,
July 8, 2020.
