The Sexual History of London (25 page)
Read The Sexual History of London Online
Authors: Catharine Arnold
âNever mind who cheated you,' responds the bully. âThat's nothing to do with them clothes what's only lent you. If yer don't know how to behave in 'em, come on home and get out of 'em.' Then, seeing Greenwood for the first time, he nudges the older woman, and addresses the girl in a softer voice, remarking that it's no good her sitting there âketching cold', and the trio move away towards the Surrey side [the South Bank] of the bridge, the young woman still insisting that she won't go back, she would rather be dead and buried. As Greenwood watches them walk away, a female voice comments: âThat's the way with them marms; they gets a silk gown on, and then a Duchess ain't good enough to be their sister. Serve her right, whatever she gets.' The voice comes from a ragged, starved-looking wretch, the bones showing sharp under her white skin, who is so drunk that she can scarcely stand and has to hold on to the stone-work for support. This apparition tells Greenwood that the young woman is a âdress woman, one of them that they tog out so that they may show off at their best and make the most of their faces'. But they can't trust the girls, adds the awful creature, venturing to take the steadying grasp from the stone coping that she might clap both her skinny hands in malicious glee. âThey never trust 'em further than they can see 'em. You might tell that by the shadder.' The âshadder' or shadow was tasked with sticking close to the âdress woman', or âdress whore' (a prostitute who hired her clothes from a procuress), and never leaving her, not even for a minute. The dress women are âno more their own mistresses than galley-slaves are,' she concludes. âAnd serve 'em right!' As for the man who accompanied them, well, he was worse than a dog. âFor dogs don't eat each other!' she screams. âHe'd steal his mother's crutches if she was a cripple, and get drunk with the money he sold them for, and go home and beat her.' And with that, the poor shameful creature staggers away.
11
This âdress woman', or âdress lodger', had probably tried to run away from Catherine Street, off the Strand, which was a popular locale with this type of prostitute. During the day and the early part of the evening, the dress women would stop almost every man they met, but with reasonable decorum. Under the influence of drink, they plied their trade with increasing rudeness and freedom as the night wore on, while their âshadders' followed at a respectful distance. Unlike other categories of prostitute, dress women led a particularly miserable life, sent out ârouged and whitewashed, with painted lips and eyebrows, and false hair', to parade in Catherine Street, Langham Place, the Haymarket Theatre, the City Road and the Lyceum, and restricted to specific beats on the same side of one particular street within a few hundred yards or less of one particular spot. If they failed to pick up a punter, their shadows would sally forth and canvass on their behalf, or swear at the girls, and even beat them.
In
The Night Side of London
, J. Ewing Ritchie echoed the sentiments of the mad woman on Waterloo Bridge, commenting that these gay ladies were worse off than the American slaves. Dress women started in the business at eighteen and were easily burned out, particularly by the effects of alcohol. Catherine Street might have appeared festive, while the gas burned brightly by night, and there was dancing, and wine, and songs, but these girls paid the price. In the small hours, you might hear the hollow laughter, sadder than tears, of a drunken dress lodger, freshly ejected from a pub, and too far gone to have any decency left. âDrink and sadness combined have tortured her brain to madness. Her curses fill the air; a crowd collects; the police come up; she is borne on a stretcher to Bow-street, and in the morning is dismissed with a reprimand, or sentenced to a month's imprisonment, as the sitting magistrate is in a good temper or the reverse.' This was a common sight on Catherine Street, says our correspondent. âI have known life lost here in these midnight brawls; yet by day it has a dull and decent appearance, and little would the passing stranger guess all its revelations of sorrow and of crime.'
12
Alcoholism was an occupational hazard for prostitutes. âWhen I'm sad, I drink,' one told Henry Mayhew. âAnd I'm very often sad.'
13
While the courtesans of the West End tippled champagne or White Satin gin, their less fortunate sisters drank themselves to death. One such was âLucy', or âLushing Loo', whose fondness for the bottle has given her that suggestive name. Mayhew interviewed Loo in an East End pub. At first, her appearance seemed to be at odds with her name. She looks lady-like, if somewhat haggard. Tastefully, if cheaply, dressed, she seems quiet and dejected. Mayhew suspects she needs a drink, and offers her half a crown. Her eyes light up, and, instead of the usual fare served in gin palaces, her tastes are sufficiently aristocratic for her to order âa drain of pale', a glass of fine brandy. Loo proceeds to order glass after glass, and becomes maudlin. When Mayhew enquires as to what the matter could be, she lays her hand to her head and cries that she wishes she were dead, and laid in her coffin, âand it won't be long now until she is'. And then with a typical alcoholic mood swing, she brightens up and starts singing. Once she's settled down a bit, Mayhew enquires as to her former occupation. âOh, I'm a seduced milliner,' she says, impatiently, ready to please a potential client. âAnything you like!'
14
Mayhew urges Loo to enter a refuge, wean herself off the drink and learn an honest trade, but Loo is indifferent to her fate. âI don't wish to live,' she replies. âI shall soon get D. T. [
delirium tremens
, a symptom of advanced alcoholism] and then I'll kill myself in a fit of madness.'
15
Soon after, a young Frenchman enters the bar, singing â
Vive l'amour, le vin, et le tabac
' (long live love, wine and tobacco) and Mayhew leaves him in conversation with Loo.
But Loo is a paragon of abstinence compared with âChina Emma', so called because her lover was a Chinese sailor called Appoo. Appoo regularly sent money home to Emma, and obviously had some feeling for her as he made regular and drastic attempts to cure her alcoholism. When Emma got drunk, Appoo tied up her arms and legs, dragged her outside into the gutter and threw buckets of water over her, but even this didn't succeed. âI'd die for the drink,' Emma told Mayhew, âI don't care what I does to get it.' Emma had even tried to kill herself on several occasions by jumping in the Thames, but her efforts were always frustrated. Once she even jumped out of a first-floor window in Jamaica Place straight into the river, but a passing boatman hooked her out and she ended up in court, sentenced to a month in jail for attempted suicide.
16
Emma was a sailor's woman, a category of prostitutes towards whom Mayhew was reasonably sympathetic. He deplored (as ever) their extravagance but was impressed by the way the sailors treated their women. Sailors were a vital source of revenue in the East End; tens of thousands of men descended on the London docks from all over the world, arriving in the world's busiest port, ready for shore leave and with their pay burning a hole in their pockets. And the sailors' women or âleggers' motts'
17
were there to help them spend it. With high-rolling sailors looking for a good time, brothel keeping inevitably flourished in the East End. One aspect of the sailors' behaviour intrigued Mayhew; rather than having several women, many sailors would take up with one girl, who effectively became their wife for the duration. Another curiosity was that very few English girls became sailors' women; they were generally German or Irish. Mayhew noted many âtall, brazen-faced' German women, dressed in gaudy colours, dancing and pirouetting in a dance hall off the Ratcliffe Highway.
Just as in the West End, the red-light district was concentrated on a certain number of streets consisting of the Ratcliffe Highway, Frederick Street, Brunswick Street and Shadwell High Street.
18
This quarter burst into life every night when the whores paraded up and down in short nightgowns and night-jackets, outside notorious pubs such as the Half Moon and Seven Stars, the Ship and Shears and the Duke of York in Shadwell High Street, and the Shakespeare's Head in Shadwell Walk,
19
âflaunting about bare-headed, in dirty-white muslin and greasy, cheap blue silk, with originally ugly faces horribly seamed with small-pox, and disfigured by vice'.
20
Many of the girls had distinctive names: âCocoa Bet'; âSalmony-faced Mary Anne'; and the legendary âBlack Sall', described by one writer like a ship: âa Dutch-built piratical schooner carrying on a free trade under the black flagâ¦many a stout and lusty lugger has borne down upon, and hoisted the British standard over, our sable privateer, Black Sall'.
21
Towards the latter half of the nineteenth century, sailors' spending patterns altered dramatically, due to the setting up of savings banks. Sailors were encouraged to bank the greater part of their pay, much to the relief of their families, but to the detriment of those whores and publicans who relied on their custom.
Â
For investigators such as Mayhew and Acton, the East End was another country, and a dangerous one at that: Mayhew perceived Whitechapel as a suspicious, unhealthy locality, its population a strange amalgamation of Jews, English, French, Germans and other âantagonistic elements that must clash and jar'. But the social reformer had the grace to concede that the theatres and music halls were first rate, with their awesome firework displays, blue demons, red demons, Satans who vanished through a trapdoor and gauzy nymphs sitting astride sunbeams halfway between the stage and the flies. Outside the theatres, fights frequently added to the sense of high drama, as in this incident:
Three times in ten minutes I saw crowds collect round doorways, attracted by fights, especially by fights between women. One of them, her face covered with blood, tears in her eyes, drunk, was trying to fly at a man while the mob watched and laughed. And as if the uproar were a signal, the population of the neighbouring âlanes' came pouring into the street, children in rags, paupers, street women, as if a human sewer were suddenly clearing itself.
22
During his inspection of the many brothels which âinfested' the East End, Mayhew noted miserable establishments with faded chintz curtains and four-poster beds, and clapped-out old women sitting around sharing a can of beer. He also witnessed a development which he found almost too horrible to describe, comparing it with the work of a sensational novelist. On this occasion, he visited a shabby house, a âwretched tumble down hovel' with no front door, in Victoria Place, Bluegate. Upon entering, he found a pitiful old woman and a young girl huddling for warmth around a miserable coke fire. The old woman told Mayhew that she paid five shillings a week rent, and charged the prostitutes who used her rooms four shillings a week, but that trade was slack as the shipping on the river was slow. Mayhew went upstairs and began his tour of inspection.
The first room we entered contained a Lascar [a sailor with the East India company], who had come over in some vessel, and his woman. There was a sickly smell in the chamber, that I discovered proceeded from the opium he had been smoking. There was not a chair to be seen; nothing but a table, upon which were placed a few odds-and-ends. The Lascar was lying on a paliasse [mattress] placed upon the floor (there was no bedstead), apparently stupefied from the effects of the opium he had been taking. A couple of old tattered blankets sufficed to cover him. By his bedside sat his woman, who was half idiotically endeavouring to derive some stupefaction from the ashes he had left in his pipe. Her face was grimy and unwashed, and her hands so black and filthy that mustard-and-cress might have been sown successfully upon them. As she was huddled up with her back against the wall she appeared an animated bundle of rags. She was apparently a powerfully made woman, and although her face was wrinkled and careworn, she did not look exactly decrepit, but more like one thoroughly broken down in spirit than in body. In all probability she was diseased.
23
This is a grimly prescient picture of prostitution and addiction, the Victorian equivalent of a crack house. While alcohol had always played its part in the history of prostitution, drug use was a new and disturbing development.
As if this level of degradation was not enough, Mayhew paints an even more desperate picture of low life in his portrayal of a âpark woman'. These poor creatures were even lower in the food chain than the worn-out unfortunates who skulked about the West End, scrounging a living from fashionable passers-by and the more affluent prostitutes who paid them to go away. According to Mayhew, the park women were utterly lost to all sense of shame; they wandered about London's parks after nightfall, and consented to any species of humiliation in return for a few shillings. Park women could be met in Hyde Park, between the hours of five and ten (until the gates were closed) in winter. In Green Park, and the Mall, which was a nocturnal thoroughfare, you could spot these low wretches walking about sometimes with men, more generally alone, often early in the morning. They were to be seen reclining on the benches placed under the trees, originally intended, no doubt, for a different purpose, occasionally with the head of a drunken man reposing in their lap. Far from being the slender beauties and willing whores encountered by James Boswell, these women were so brutalized and scarred by alcohol and disease that the parks were the only venues left to them; they operated in the shadows, away from the gaslight which would have exposed the ravages of time, the defects of their personal appearance and the shabbiness of their ancient and dilapidated attire.