London in the eighteenth century was the greatest city in the world. It was a magnet that drew men and women from the rest of England in huge numbers. For a few the streets were paved with gold, but for the majority it was a harsh world with little guarantee of money or food. For the poor and destitute, London's streets offered little more than the barest living. Yet men, women and children found a great variety of ways to eke out their existence, sweeping roads, selling matches, singing ballads and performing all sorts of menial labor. Many of these activities, apart from the direct begging of the disabled, depended on an appeal to charity, but one often mixed with threats and promises. Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London provides a remarkable insight into the lives of Londoners, for all of whom the demands of charity and begging were part of their everyday world.
Chapter 4.
Menaces and Promises
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| Detail from William Hogarth, The Enraged Musician' (1741). |
Collet was run down by Staples and a couple of other men, and arrested and charged with highway robbery. When Curtis saw Collet at a nearby public house, she 'swoon'd away several times at the sight of him'; and, although she freely admitted to having given Collet the shilling in charity, he found himself on trial for his life at the Old Bailey. He was acquitted, but his experience reflects the ambivalent character of begging; the extent to which a request for relief could be misinterpreted as a threat, or a promise. The fact that a snuffbox in the shape of a gun and an unsheathed knife were found in Collet's pocket when he was searched, also reflects the extent to which begging could be used very self-consciously as a mask for other, more illegal activities. For many writers the elision of begging, theft and criminality gave point and grist to their dyspeptic social diatribes. For Henry Fielding there was no distinction between a beggar and a thief:
"all the thieves in general are vagabonds in the true sense of the word, being wanderers from their lawful place of abode ... These various vagabonds do indeed get their livelihood by thieving, and not as petty beggars or petty chapmen ..."But for beggars and prostitutes, the boundary was also illusory. The offer of sex could wring a few extra pence, the threat of violence a few more, while the promise of being repaid twice over opened many uncharitable purses. By rights, beggars were supposed to cringe and supplicate; to hold their bodies in an attitude of submission, and to pitch their voices in a whining powerless note, what John Gay refers to as a 'begging tone'. Indeed, an inability to play this role could create a real problem. Daniel Defoe's Colonel Jack, for instance, was forced to turn thief precisely because he was:
"a surly, ill-look'd, rough boy ... if he beg'd, he did it with so ill a tone, rather like bidding folks give him victuals, than entreating them, that one man of whom he had something given, and knew him, told him one day ... thou are but an awkward, ugly sort of a beggar..."The tone and physical self-presentation of beggars was a constant, and constantly distrusted, claim to powerlessness. The extent to which this persona could be adopted and then thrown off was frequently recognised by eighteenth-century commentators. In Trivia, John Gay warned:
"Where Lincoln's Inn's wide space is rail'd round, Cross not with vent'rous step; there oft' is found The lurking Thief, who while the day-light shone, Made the Walls echo with his begging tone: That crutch which late compassion mov'd, shall wound Thy bleeding head, and fell thee to the ground."And one anonymous mid-century commentator asked bitterly:
"How frequently do we meet with instances of beggars who come in the most suppliant manner, make out a long, compassionate case, but when they find that ... they are not likely to gain their ends, turn the rough side of their tongues, and ... take another way of being supplied, that is, by force take from you what your discretion thought proper to deny?"This ambiguity, this sense of real physical threat lurking beneath the rags and self-deprecating body language of the very poor did not exist merely in the minds of the middling sort. Begging with menaces was a common activity whenever it was likely to result in success. Chimney-sweeps used the threat of their own dirtiness to encourage almsgiving on May Day. Certainly the man who begged a shilling from Carl Moritz as he walked towards Windsor in 1782 seems to have been aware of the impact of his threatening physical presence. He asked Moritz,
"for a halfpenny to buy, as he said, some bread, as he had eat nothing that day. I felt in my pocket and found that I had no halfpence; no nor even a sixpence in short nothing but shillings. I told him the circumstance which I hoped would excuse me: on which he said with an air and manner the drift of which I could not understand, 'God bless my soul?'. This drew my attention still closer to the huge brawny fist, which grasped his stick; and that closer attention determined me immediately to put my hand in my pocket and give him a shilling."
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| William Hogarth, Industry and Idleness', plate iii, 'The Idle 'Prentice at Play in the Church Yard, during Divine service', (1747). |
An "O" indicated that the inhabitants had made a small and unsatisfactory contribution; an "o" meant that the alms had been refused; a "^" indicated a generous alms; while "00" that a lone woman was in the house. The sense of excitement and threat experienced by the beggarly poor, and rich householders is evident in the deposition of James Mahon:
"My boy said, Sir, they are coming for money. I went down and opened the shop door. I saw a little dirty ragged boy at the door, with a blue cockade in his hat: he said, God bless your honour, remember the poor mob. I said go along, you little impudent rascal, or I will kick your backside ... He immediately turned away from me, and said, then I will go and fetch my captain... The mob came from Mr Eades's house to mine ... led by the boy who came to demand money of me before, and ... a vast crowd followed him; there might be a hundred ... The boy said, Now I have brought my captain, Sir... I said, ... How much, Sir? Half a crown Sir, says he. I ... put two shillings and sixpence into his hand. He looked at it some time ... They then gave me three cheers and went to the next house... What did he do with the money? - I believe he put it into his pocket. I was in too much terror to take notice of that."
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| James Gilray, 'The Whore's Last Shift' (1779). (British Museum) |
Having knocked on the door, he again 'pulled off his hat and desired me to remember the Protestant religion'. But in this case neither the appeal nor the threat of the iron bar Banton held in his other hand was sufficient to prise some cash from Rowton. Instead, he refused to give him anything, threatening to call a constable. At this Banton threatened Rowton with his iron bar and said, 'if I did not give him something he would break my windows'. Eventually Rowton was persuaded to give Banton 3d.; even so Banton was later arrested and eventually tried for assault. Whether Banton thought of himself as a rioter or a beggar is unclear. The outstretched hat, held 'in a begging way', suggests the latter, while the iron bar, held in his other hand, seems to suggest a more active role. The jury found him guilty of assault, but it is clear they viewed him more in the light of a beggar than an assailant. Despite finding him guilty of a capital charge, they specifically recommended him to 'His Majesty's Mercy'.
The 'mob' was a powerful force in eighteenth-century London. On holidays and in political crises, it regularly enforced its views on householders. A candle in the front window was a common sign of support for whichever side of a political question was currently in control of the streets. During one of the Wilkite riots in 1768, one observer claimed, 'there were candles in every window in all the houses, some out of fear, and some perhaps out of respect'. Windows without the required candle were likely to be broken, and a shilling or two could justifiably be demanded by way of an earnest from any pedestrian who found himself in the wrong place. Drink was a constant but expensive handmaiden to popular politics and one whose price needed to be paid. George Banton was undoubtedly very unlucky to be prosecuted for demanding what many of his contemporaries asked for and received without cavil.
Using menaces to encourage the charity of contributors was not, however, restricted to the carefully scripted political crises of the eighteenth century. The role of violence in begging was ambiguous enough to form a basis for a defence offered by the uniquely pompous and successful early advocate at the Old Bailey, William Garrow. He was engaged as defence lawyer by James Rook and James Jordan in 1785 when they were charged with highway robbery. Rook and Jordan had violently assaulted James Stewart, grabbing him by the lapels of his jacket and saying 'money we want, money we must have'.
William Garrow addressed the jury:
"Now I need not state to the jury that that expression is perfectly equivocal, it is the language of threat, of menace, or the language of supplication, of indigence in the mouth of a beggar; there is no ... indication on the part of the person asking, that he intended to distinguish his application from that of a beggar; a man earnest for a bit of bread, might address the person of whom he sought relief by laying his hand on any part of the body, and most naturally on the shoulder of such person..."The jury were not entirely convinced, and condemned Rook and Jordan to seven years' transportation, but it is clear that Garrow thought the strategy was worth a try. In 1719 Thomas Paven was charged by one of the constables of St Stephen Coleman Street with:
"Begging, frequently pretending to fall in to fitts, at other times attempting with a broom stick to break heads when not relieved and known to be a very disorderly, idle person."And on 30 September 1744, William Burke was arrested for 'wandering and begging about the street and particularly for abusing Phil Gill, glover, the corner of the Old Change for refusing to relieve, and threatening him with a pistol'. In other words, while Defoe's fictional account of being attacked by a disabled beggar was indeed fictional, it nevertheless reflected one facet of street begging:
"Being come out into Gracechurch Street, I observ'd a man follow'd me, with one of his legs tied up in a string, and hopping along with the other, and two crutches; he begg'd for a farthing, but I inclining not to give him any thing, the fellow follow'd me still, till I came to a court, when I answer'd hastily to him, I have not for you, pray don't be so troublesome; with which words he knock'd me down with one of his crutches."
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| Marcellus Laroon, CA Merry New Song', from Cryes of the City of London Drawn from Life (1687). |
Driven by need, or simply by desire, in a world that, despite the warnings of the popular press, left material goods readily to hand, and which largely trusted everyone to respect private property, many beggars could not resist. Mary Richardson, alias Ann Hammond, lived very poor indeed. In 1715 she was prosecuted for stealing a leg of pork, value 4s 6d. out of the shop of Andrew King. She was found guilty and sentenced to be whipped. Two years later she was convicted of stealing several items of clothing from Elizabeth Thomson and branded on the hand. On n June 1717 she went out begging, and approached the house of the Reverend Dr Thomas Bennet at eight in the morning, hoping to be relieved with a mug of small beer. The door was open, and she made her way into the house, and to Bennet's study, where she found two damask table clothes and five napkins.
She slipped these into the basket she carried, and quietly complied when Bennet, 'bid her go out of doors', 'thinking her a very bold beggar to come through the house and into his study'. Some paupers actively justified theft on religious grounds. When in 1752 Rebecca Hart was arrested for stealing coals, she declared, 'It was no sin in the poor to rob the rich; and that if it was, J— C— had died to procure the pardon of all such sinners'.
The pressures that led to theft, and the ability of some beggars to resist those same pressures, are reflected in the case of Margaret Davis. She was a widow and 'used to work with my needle'. Friday 25 April 1755 was cloudless and warm, and having been south of the river to visit a friend, Margaret was walking home when James Hudson accosted her:
"he said, let me go home with you, I said, I never took any body home with me, but he much desired it, so I let him. We went into my room, he took his buckles out of his shoes and gave them to me, and he pulled off his shirt for fear of vermin, and laid that and his cloaths upon a chest, and unfortunately I got up and went away with them".
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| Detail from William Hogarth, 'Industry and Idleness', plate vi, The Industrious 'Prentice Out of his Time, and Married to his Master's Daughter' (1747). |
Not many beggars could resist the temptations of theft, as these two beggarly men appear to have done, and most were probably forced and enticed to step over the line between an 'economy of makeshift', which included collecting the detritus of this world city, and outright criminality. The petty and beggarly nature of their crimes, however, is fully reflected in the items they stole. Just to list the 'objects of desire' that enticed the men, women and children caught thieving in the City of London and tried at the Court of Bridewell for a single month in 1744, gives a powerful sense of the desperation and poverty of these 'criminals'.
They stole ham from a shop, old iron, a handkerchief, a napkin, ribbon and brush, old books, sugar on Bear Key, two loaves of bread, an apron, asparagus, an old gown from a washerwoman, a silver thimble, a thousand tin tacks and a pair of old stays. These were the thefts of the beggarly poor - people who took advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves, and overstepped the bounds of legality.
Theft brought with it a real danger of judicial retribution. It was also something that sat awkwardly with eighteenth-century popular culture. Although highwaymen frequently became popular heroes, and, while pilfering from the docks as part of employment there was an everyday expectation, this was also a society in which honesty and fair-dealing was highly prized by the poor as well as the middling sort and elite. The biblical injunction against theft, and oaths made on the Bible, were treated with profound respect.
As a result, while theft could not always be resisted, many of the beggarly poor sought other ways of gaining a livelihood - perhaps equally illegal, but nevertheless morally more acceptable. An appeal to greed, to 'conditional promises of future returns, with an interest extraordinary, beyond the statue of usury, tho' out of the reach of it', was one such strategy. Rigged dice, mock auctions, games with three thimbles and pricking at the garter were just a few of the activities that allowed begging to be reformulated as games of chance and advantage. Gay lists some of these in his 'Trivia':
"Who can the various City Frauds recite,With all the petty Rapines of the Night?Who now the Guinea-Dropper's Bait regards,Trick'd by the Sharper's Dice, or Juggler's Cards?Who shou'd I warn thee ne'er to join the Fray,Where the sham-quarrel interrupts the Way?Careful observers, studious of the town,Shun the misfortunes that disgrace the clown.Untempted, they contemn the jugglers' feats,Pass by the Meuse, nor try the thimble's cheats."In part, the dangers of the street listed by Gay and his contemporaries reflect a literary tradition rather than the real behaviour of the poor. He is listing the 'Tricks of the Town' for both an unwary provincial audience and a knowing urban one, but there were real opportunities for subtle fraud and the poor of London were not backwards in pursuing them. Some of these 'tricks' came under the direct auspices of the vagrancy laws. On a Thursday or Friday in late January 1725/6, for instance, Rowland Davis was intrigued enough to follow John Jones into a public house with the promise of 'tricks with balls'. But he became angry when Jones started 'asking him for money for the same ... and endeavoured to cheat him of his clothes'. The Court of the Governors of Bridewell decided that Jones could be 'esteemed a juggler [and] therefore a vagrant idle person'. Jugglers, along with actors and pedlars were among the rag-tag list of paupers whose titles filled eighteenth-century legislation. Perhaps the classic urban 'trick' was 'money dropping', and its variant 'ring dropping'. An early nineteenth-century account of money dropping (also known as guinea dropping) which claimed that the practice had been much more common in earlier times, gives a flavour of both the literary tradition of the 'Tricks of the Town', and the reality of some people's experience of the frauds of London:
"What is this?' says the dropper; 'my wiggy! If this is not a leather purse with money! Ha! ha! ha! Let's have a look at it.' While he unfolds its contents, his companion comes up, and claims his title to a share. 'Not you, indeed! Replies the finder, this gentleman was next me; was not you, Sir?' To which the countryman assenting, or, perhaps, insisting upon his priority, the finder declares himself no churl in the business, offers to divide it into three parts and points out a public house at which they may share the contents, and drink over their good luck: talks as they go of his once sharing in a much larger sum, with a 'stranger, who was honourable: - nothing like honour!' The found money is counterfeit, or screens, or else Fleet notes ... They drink, and fill their grog again ... the draught board, or cards, constantly exhibit the means of staking the easily acquired property so lately found, but which they cannot divide just now for want of change. The countryman bets, and if he loses, is called upon to pay; if he wins 'tis added to what is coming to him out of the purse."Money dropping was not an exclusively literary phenomenon. Henry Sweetingham, a journeyman, had lived in London for at least a few years prior to Monday, 19 May 1735. 'He came home that afternoon almost frighted out of his Wits.' He 'cry'd and stamp'd and was ready to tear [his] Hair off for Vexation'. The cause of his misery was a variant of this same classic ruse. He later told the court at the Old Bailey:
"Between two and three in the afternoon, in St Paul's Churchyard, a man stoop'd down and pick'd up a shilling, and told me, I should be welcome to drink it out with him. Accordingly we went to the Black-Spread Eagle in Paternoster Row, and met [John Boswell]. They two went to cutting of cards for six pence a time. I told them I'd go six pence with them. I presently lost 3s.6d. which was all the money I had. The prisoner said he would give four guineas for my watch. I took it out and laid it on the table; but instead of offering me money, he said he would play for it, at two guineas, a cut. I cut once and lost two guineas, and then I said I would cut no more. The other man swore if I would not, he would, for his money was at stake as well as my watch. So as he was going to cut, the prisoner catch'd up my watch and run away with it, and the other after him. All this was done in less than half an hour."In a knowing urbane way, the judge instructed the jury that CA gambler is one of the modern cant names for a money dropper'. Joseph Millikin was similarly duped by William Wilson in the spring of 1750. Millikin was a stranger in town, and possessed of a broad provincial accent that marked him out every time he opened his mouth. Even the short-hand recorder at the Old Bailey could not resist making fun of his accent, recording his speech phonetically: °thou art the mon that robbed me'. Millikin was 'walking in the Fleet Market ... about four in the afternoon' on Monday 18 June, looking for the house of a Mr Clarke. A young boy approached him and offered to take him to the address he was seeking. The boy took him 'into Ann Glover's house in Chick-lane' and soon after:
"came in a pretty lusty man and [William Wilson]: they set to gaming at something, they called it pricking at the belt; the prisoner first lost a shilling, then a guinea, upon which he asked me to change a five pound, or a 5 guinea piece. I had got a silver watch in my pocket that I had received in lieu of some money, that was above my gold. I took that out and laid it down upon the table, there was £3.12s., two 36s. pieces and three moidores; I took them out and laid them on the table, upon which, said he, I think you have got a gold watch, I have let mine run down, please to let me regulate mine by yours; said I, it is but a pinchbeck one. So I took it out; then the lusty man got up and turned me a little about, and carried me out of the door; going out I looked back and saw Wilson clap his handkerchief over the gold and watches, and pulPd them to that side of the table he was on. When I came in again the watches and gold were gone..."
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| Anon, 'You are clean Fair Lady' (1791). Note the hat held in a 'begging way\(Corporation of the City of London) |
Even the poorest of London's inhabitants were expected to play games of chance. In mid January 1768 Thomas Turner was lodging at Mr Bavis's cook shop, earning a living by hawking a basket of sausages or 'polonies' through the alehouses of St James's. It was a cold, clear Saturday night when he found himself at the Thistle and Crown in Swallow Street where Abraham Javelleaue was a lodger, and entered the taproom, calling out his polonies to the assembled crowd. Javelleaue challenged him to toss for a polony. Despite Turner's evident poverty, he seems to have willingly agreed and lost two sausages as a result. In the subsequent disagreement, several of the polonies fell to the floor, and Javelleaue stole several more. In the end, another customer, Thomas Tinderbox, took up Turner's cause and fought Javelleaue in the alehouse yard. But what is remarkable is that Turner agreed to the wager in the first place.
In many respects casual gambling of this sort was simply an expected and accepted part of the everyday lives of Londoners. It encompassed a series of behaviours that the beggarly poor, working people and the well-to-do all found useful and enjoyable - at least when they won. There were, however, several circumstances in which gambling became both unacceptable in itself and where it was perceived as a form of vagrancy. Certainly, the governors of the Court of Bridewell were keen to prosecute games such as 'pricking at the garter', false dice and, most especially, wheelbarrow gambling.
In January 1745/6 Henry Howard was discovered 'keeping false dice' and playing 'unlawfull games in a wheelbarrow in Moorfields'; while in the same month James Mills was accused of defrauding Robert Fryer of 23 shillings at 'pricking at the garter'.37 Wheelbarrow gambling involved either a game with a ball and three cups or a simple game of dice, but it was always frowned upon and was subject to regular proclamations from the Common Council, Lord Mayor and the Middlesex Sessions. The Lord Mayor and Common Council, for instance, issued a proclamation in 1796 declaring:
"This court considering the real obstructions, hindrances, dangers and injuries that frequently do happen ... by the great numbers of unruly and disorderly persons that oftentimes assemble and meet together ... about illegal sports and pastimes and particularly with wheelbarrows, or other things for playing with dice ... command that no person or persons whatsoever ... throw at any cock or cocks, or meet or assemble in the said streets, lanes, publick passages or places, about any such unlawful sports or pastimes whatsoever, either by throwing at cocks, or gaming upon wheelbarrows, or otherwise howsoever ... to the pestering thereof ... upon pain of being prosecuted as rioters and breakers of his majesty's peace..."
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| Thomas Rowlandson, 'Miseries of London' (1807). (Corporation of the City of London) |
Within eight years of watching her cousin die of heat prostration in her arms, at the hands of William Bird and the parochial authorities of Westminster, she was 'wandering abroad and using unlawfull games with dice in a wheelbarrow'. A generation earlier, in January 1714/5, Elizabeth Brown was arrested for 'seducing and corrupting' a young apprentice, Samuel Fetter, and 'for driving a wheel barrow in the streets with fruit and dice'. Most games of chance required at least a little capital. Reasonably respectable clothing was also necessary if the unwary were to be fleeced in games of this sort, as the possibility of large rewards depended on the impression that all the participants possessed at least some money. Without the right clothes, or the wherewithal to buy or borrow a wheelbarrow, the chance of successfully perpetrating games and tricks on less worldly Londoners was limited. At the same time, however, it was possible to perpetrate beggarly tricks without a lot of cash.
In September 1731 James Northall and Thomas Haycock worked up a sham petition against the £Pot Act' and went from alehouse to alehouse 'extorting money', perhaps suggesting that they would report the publican for serving short measure if they were not given some contribution. The Pot Act regulated the measures used in the sale of alcohol, and one can only imagine the mixture of fear and uncertainty Northall and Haycock provoked in the minds of alehouse keepers keen to both avoid unwelcome attention and to unburden themselves of an onerous layer of regulation. A decade later, on 25 February 1740/1, Daniel Hawks knocked on the door of the Reverend Mr William Rayner with a heavy bundle. Hawks claimed it was a parcel just arrived on the Oxford coach, and demanded payment for its delivery. In fact the bundle contained only three bricks.
The 'Tricks of the Town' relied on greed. They promised a quick return and easy profit, but they nevertheless acted as one of the mechanisms through which money was redistributed from the relatively well off to the very poor. While fraud and begging were clearly differentiated in the minds of both victims and perpetrators, it is also clear that many of the beggarly poor were happy to trick strangers and countrymen if they came across an opportunity, if they could afford a carefully filed pair of dice, or were quick-handed enough to play a successful game of ball and three cups. If greed and slight of hand were useful to the beggarly poor, lust was even more useful, and frequently easier and cheaper to generate.
Prostitution is generally seen in terms of the history of sexuality. The frisson of the erotic has always coloured the historical analysis of commercial sex. Yet it is clear that most prostitutes were desperately poor, and were using the one commodity they had, their bodies, to elicit a few pence for food and warmth. At the beginning of the eighteenth century John Gay depicts prostitutes as bedraggled and desperate:
"'Tis she who nightly strowls with saunt'ring Pace,No stubborn Stays her yielding shape embrace;Beneath the lamp her tawdry ribbons glare,The new-scower'd Manteau, and the slattern Air;High-draggled petticoats her travels show,With falt'ring sounds she sooths the cred'lous Ear,My Noble Captain! Charmer! Love! My Dear!"In many cases prostitutes were beggars who added the allure of sex to the claims of charity. The language of both body and voice used by most prostitutes - a gentle (or not so gentle) tug on the sleeve, with a 'Ah country-man, give us a Dram', or How do you do, Countryman; Will you give me a Pint of Wine?' - was at least superficially a plea for charity. Even when these pleas were prefaced by 'My Noble Captain! Charmer! Love! My Dear!', the language used by prostitutes seems more akin to the 'Kind Christian Gentleman, wont you relieve my suffering?' used by beggars than it does to any sexual chat-up line. On a cool evening in late April 1781, John Downs, a black man living in Fleet Street, was having a quiet drink at the Sir John Falstaff. Sarah Robinson approached him:
"she asked me to drink and said she was very hungry: I gave her three-pence to get something to eat; she was very ragged; I asked her if she had no better clothes than those on her back; she said her clothes were in pawn; I gave her some money to get them out; she took me to her lodgings at Mr James's in St Giles's; I paid her very fair; I staid all night."Sarah Cooper 'had lately come out of the workhouse, and ... was very distressed' when she met John Craig coming down the Strand. First she asked him to give 'her something to drink, and [then] asked him for two shillings first, and he said he would give me two shillings after I had obliged him .. ,' Mary Long accosted Christopher Hall in Drury Lane on 5 December 1717 with a 'How do you do, countryman; will you give me a pint of wine'. She and her companion were dressed in rags and went with Hall to a private room at the Fountain Tavern. A third women, equally ragged, joined them there. Hall sat at one end of the room, bought drinks for all three women, and eventually allowed, or encouraged, Mary Long to come close enough to masturbate him to orgasm.
The literally arms' length relationship between Mary Long and Christopher Hall speaks strongly about the cultural, as well as the physical, distance between the two. Like Sarah Robinson and Sarah Cooper, Mary and her companions were essentially ragged beggars, performing a service in exchange for the gift of a small amount of alcohol. The apparent poverty and raggedness of Mary Long and her companions was not unusual. Late in life, Francis Place recollected the state of the young women who worked the streets in Limehouse, St Catherine's Lane and Rosemary Lane in the East End towards the close of the eighteenth century:
"many had ragged dirty shoes and stockings and some no stockings at all ...numbers wore no handkerchiefs at all in warm weather, and the breasts of many hung down in a most disgusting manner, their hair among the generality was straight and 'swung in rat tails' over their eyes and it was filled with lice..."Margery Stanton was a prostitute and a thief who worked the alleys and passages around Bond Street. Her face was heavily marked with smallpox, but, perhaps the clearest reflection of her desperation and poverty was her nickname, 'Ruggety Madge'. At her trial, just before she was sentenced to death, she declared, 'I have not a half-penny to save me.' Of course, not all prostitutes were entirely destitute. Sarah Knight, for instance, was a common streetwalker who worked the lanes near Union Street in Westminster with Mary Mills, the wife of a carpenter. Knight had lodged in the same building for over three years and appears to have had a relatively stable existence. On a cool and clear Saturday night, 10 September 1774, she spent a long evening 'sauntering' up and down, plying for custom. Her mother had died the previous week and, in her grief, she drank heavily.
Elizabeth Gregory, a fellow prostitute and the wife of a Chelsea Pensioner, described how she 'appeared to be much concerned and cryed' for the loss of her mother. She was not entirely broke, however, as she had 'two shillings to pay for her liquor and had four or five more in her pocket'. Later that night she was picked up by the watch and forced to spend her first evening ever in a watchhouse cell. Between the death of her mother and the experience of imprisonment, she decided she could stand no more. She took the expensive white silk ribbon she wore to attract customers, tied a sliding knot in it, and hanged herself from the door post of her watch house cell.
The ragged appearance of many street walkers is all the more striking given the role of fine clothing, of the small promise of luxury and cleanliness represented by a single white silk ribbon, in attracting customers. Indeed, it was a recognition of the function of finery in prostitution that encouraged the Governors of the London Workhouse in January 1704/5 to order 'that all nightwalkers that are and that hereafter shall be brot into the workhouse be made to work in the same dress they are brought in'.Gillray's harrowing portrait of a prostitute down on her luck makes a similarly tragic connection between clothing, poverty and prostitution.
Nor is it difficult to locate real women for whom prostitution formed just one stop in an ever downward cycle of poverty. Martha Tilman claimed to be 'a poor girl come up from Scarborough in order to get a service'. But Elizabeth Honour claimed, 'she gets her bread by street walking, so do I', and that they shared a bed in a common lodging house. On the night Martha was accused of having stolen a pair of stays from Elizabeth Honour at least three other people were asleep in the same room, 'There were a woman and two children lay in that other bed, but they were beggars'.
From service to prostitution to beggary were two very short steps indeed. Sarah Spiller was examined by the parochial officers of the small City parish of St Dionis Backchurch in the spring of 1777. By this point in her life she was being maintained by the parish in a contract workhouse run by John Hughes and William Phillips at Hoxton - a place described by one fellow inmate as 'a slaughter house for poor human bodies'.56 Sarah described the circumstances of her life, and the almost casual place of prostitution in it:
"She went away from Pauls Head Court at 5 years of age with her father and lived with her grandmother after that several years. At ten years of age she went to service to take care of a child in Spitalfields where she lived 2 months and then 6 or 7 months out of place. Then she went to live at Baptist Head, St John Street where she lived about 7 or 8 months. From thence she went to Islington and lived at the Crown Alehouse in Laser Street. Lived there about 8 months and then lived in Tash Street at ye Coach and Horses. Lived there about 4 or 5 months, then lived at No. 10 Lambs Buildings Bunhill Row and lived there about 7 months. After that Justice Spiller, her cousin, put her to a place to learn to sew [and she] was about 9 or 10 months there and then went to a cousin's, Isindike, in George Street Spittlefields. [She] was there about a year and half and had no wages only victuals and drink for her work and was then near 3 years on the Town and then went to live at the 2 Sugar Loaves, King Street and lived there about 8 months, where she fell sick. From thence went to a lodging about a fortnight and thence to St Giles's workhouse."In the early 17608 Mary Brown and Rebecca Dean worked the streets around Fleet market, picking up men.58 They formed one of the ubiquitous pairs of women who gave areas such as Fleet Market such a bad reputation. It could well have been this pair who found the fifteen-year-old Ann Hook, 'quite a stranger and very poor and destitute' on the streets. Whatever their names, Hook
"was closely applied to by some girls of the town, who was by and belongs to one Fanny Finley, who keeps a house of ill fame in Fleet Market, next door to the Bull and Garter, there to go live with her. That one night being in company with them, she was prevail'd upon to go home with them, when after pressing her to drink very freely of Liquor the said Fanny Finley found means to extort a promise from her to live with her promising to find her with meat, drink, cloaths, washing and lodging for 155. a week, which was the method she took with the rest of the girls there, and that they were to earn this money by walking the streets and bringing men and bad company to her house..."In Ann Hook's case desperation and begging clearly led directly to prostitution. In this instance, the relative security of a 'bawdy house' provided
a real, if temporary, refuge from the street. For others, prostitution was a more casual and contested affair. Mary Price, the twenty-three year-old wife of a tallow chandler in St Martin-in-the-Fields, combined begging in the western reaches of London with casual prostitution. She told a local gardener how her financial and sexual relationship with the improbably named local notable Francis Gotobed had saved her from starvation: she had had many a shilling and sixpence of him and had it not been for him she should have been half starved'.
The beggar-woman whom John Nicholls, himself a pauper, entertained in his almshouse in Aldenham in 1731 was also clearly willing to combine begging with prostitution. Only an anonymous tip-off to the governors of the almshouse put a stop to their regular arrangement. This same equation between begging, poverty and prostitution can also be found in the attitudes of the authorities and of men in general. William Hutton, that always enthusiastic Birmingham 'countryman', was struck both by the beauty and fine clothing of London's prostitutes and by their poverty:
"These transitory meteors rise, like the stars, in the evening; are nearly as numerous; and, like them, shine in their only suit. They hawk their charms to a crowded market, where the purchasers are few. - Many attempts are made for one customer gained. They cling to ones arms like the Lilliputian ships to the girdle of Gulliver. Some of the finest women I saw in London were of this class. I conversed with many of them. - they could all swear, talk indecently and drink gin. Most of them assured me they had not a penny in the world. I considered them as objects of pity more than of punishment; and would gladly have given a trifle to each, but found it could not be done for less than ten thousand shillings."In other words, the women who tried to wrest a living from the lust of male Londoners were, at least in Mutton's view, objects of charity. A careful observer could not help but notice their beggarly characteristics. And while historians have tended to connive at the depiction of prostitution as a distinct and well-defined process (even a profession) it is clear that commercial sex was more an outpost of poverty than anything else. It was not just in the uneven scales that measured the financial circumstances of poor women that begging and sexuality were linked. Quite simply, young women forced to beg for a living were assumed to be sexually available. In part, this was a small fragment of a broader misogyny and culture of exploitation. Every female domestic was at risk of assault, while vicious public attacks on prostitution frequently poured from London's presses:
"The bane of vertue, and the bawd of vice,Pander to hell, is this she cockatrice:She's like the devil, seeking every hour,Whom she may first decoy, and then devour.Let every thinking mortal, then beware,Least he be caught in her damn'd cunning snare:...Your body to the pox and soul to hell".Even beyond this sort of bile and vitriol, a clear assumption of sexual availability can be discerned. Even the slight defence of a child on one's back did not preclude men of all classes simply assuming that they could purchase sex from a beggar. William King, in his 1709 poem 'The Beggar Woman', tells the story of a gentleman out riding who comes across a woman with an infant tied to her back:
"A beggar by her trade; yet not so meanBut that her cheeks were fresh and linen clean ...She needed not much courtship to be kind..."The beggar-woman leads the gentleman into the woods in search of a secluded spot, 'little Bobby to her shoulder bound ...' In this instance, before the gentleman can satisfy his desires, the female beggar manages to foist her infant on to him, trussing him up in a cloth with the child. Running off, she cries:
"Sir, goodbye; be not angry that we part,I trust the child to you with all my heart:But, ere you get another, 'ti'n't not amissTo try a year or two how you'll keep this."Despite the trick, the rider's clear assumption is that any beggar would have sex in exchange for money. This same assumption was clearly in the mind of Felix Donnelly when he attempted to have sex with Margaret King on 9 April 1760 just off Rosemary Lane. King, a beggar, described the situation on that chill Wednesday to the court at the Old Bailey:
"I had been a begging all that day. This other woman carries chips about to sell [and] she came home and had lost the heel of her shoe. She asked me to be so good as to lend her my shoes. I lent them to her. She met Sarah Tisham and this man [Felix Donnelly] coming together. They called me to bring a light... Said she, I have got an acquaintance [and] she insisted upon my going to an alehouse, but I would not ... When I came up with the pot of beer, I found him and the two women close together ... I said, what are you about? One of them said, hold your tongue, or I'll run this knife to your heart. He wanted to lie with Mary Granvile, and the other woman said she had got the pox. He said he liked his country women better. He took me and used me very odiously, too bad to be spoke of; he put me in fear, and wanted to be rude with me, and gave the old woman a shilling for the bed, desiring she would coax me to lie with him ... I was barefooted and bare leg'd."Even women engaged in the entirely legal pauper professions were assumed to be sexually available. William Woty's 1770, 'A Mock Invitation to Genius' assumes that all street sellers are essentially prostitutes, and expresses a preference for them over his own more discriminating muse:
"Or sooner would I seek relief from Nell,Town-tramping, oyster-laden - or from thee,Soap-lathering Bess, the chief of all thy train,Great mistress of the washing-tub, well-skilledIn friction ambidextrous. Ye, my fair!Ye first should have my vows, green-vendent Peg!(Than whom none sooner decks the verdant stallWith fruit cucumerous) and shrimp-crowned Doll,In alehouse well-agnized, with brawny Jane,Who constant plies the market, basket-armed.Nor less doth deep-mouthed, piscatory Kate(Whose voice is melody through all the realmOf Billingsgate, admired for flow of wordsAnd well-timed oratory, far beyond ...)Or brick-dust Nan attract my due regard."In some cases this assumption of the sexual availability of poor women led to a tragic outcome. Sarah Griffin was begging her way from London to Worcestershire, with a pass and two pence and three farthings in her pocket, when on 7 September 1740 she asked a young man, William Duell, to shew her a lodging'. He directed her to a barn in Horn Lane in Acton owned by a Mr Life, and very helpfully 'opened a truss of hay for her to lie on'. Sarah was obviously nervous, as she specifically asked Duell 'not to tell any body that she was there'. Later that night Duell came back with five or six other young men including George Curtis, alias Tug-mutton, who himself normally slept rough in a local barn. When Tug-mutton accosted Sarah asking 'who was there?', she answered CA poor soul! Don't meddle with me', claiming that she was poxed. He attacked her anyway, putting his hands up her dress and declaring, 'pox'd, or pox'd not, by God I will'.
With this the boys held her down while first Curtis and then John Davis, then Henry Richards, followed by John James, alias Jack at the Captains, then John Wolfe and finally William Duell all raped her. She struggled and cried murder. Having finished, the boys went to the Star alehouse in Acton and drank away Sarah Griffin's last few pence, leaving her to die slowly in the barn. Perhaps the ambiguity of the relationship between begging and prostitution is best captured in the experience of Elizabeth Burroughs. On Wednesday 4 August 1736 she was 'coming up Drury Lane about 9 o'clock at night, and at the Corner of Princess Street', she was stopped by an American, William Orr.
They agreed to go to the Hamburgh Coffee House, where Orr secured a private room and a quartern of brandy. Burroughs later recounted their conversation: 'Then he told me if I would have some concerns with him, he would make me a present'. After a fair amount of drinking and sex, Orr refused to pay Burroughs the sum she expected and she took up his silver watch in lieu. Orr, 'contested with the girl, in order to have [the] watch again'. But Burroughs 'desired money before she'd give it [up], first half a guinea, then a crown, then charity because she was poor'. For Elizabeth Burroughs the boundaries between prostitution and begging, between theft, trickery and the pleas of absolute poverty, were illusory. Each formed a small fragment of a broader relationship to a society filled with people more powerful than herself.
By Tim Hitchcock in the book "Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London", published by Hambledon and London, London & New York, 2004, excerpts p.75-96. Adapted to be posted by Leopoldo Costa. Illustrations scanned from the book.
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