The dark side of Georgian London, with Lucy Inglis

It was during the Georgian era that London started to become the modern city it is today. As the population increased dramatically, architect John Nash designed thoroughfares like Regent Street and Haymarket, new bridges were built over the Thames and landmarks like Trafalgar Square and Regent’s Park were created. Huge advances were made in the arts, publishing and cooking; even the leisurely traditions of tea drinking and visiting coffee shops have their origins in the Georgian period.

At the same time the gap between rich and poor was widening - we’re all familiar with the scenes of poverty, disease and extreme squalor depicted by Hogarth in works like Gin Lane. Writer and historian Lucy Inglis is an expert on the subject; she’s the author of Georgian London: Into the Streets and an award-winning blog about life in the capital in the 18th century. We decided to quiz her on the dark side of the Georgian era, however as it turns out, it wasn’t that much more sinister than London is today…

Who were the most controversial characters, and would they be deemed controversial by today’s standards?
Georgian London puts modern London in the shade: anyone or anything deemed controversial now has an eighteenth century equivalent who took far bigger risks, achieved more, suffered more, or was more debauched. But the most controversial in their day? John Wilkes, the cross-eyed and hideously ugly politician, who was also a womaniser, a gambler and a seditious agitator; Byron, for being impossibly badly behaved and the inappropriate relationship with his half sister Augusta; Emma Hamilton, for her whole life. Journalists even went through her household rubbish in Clarges Street where she was living with Nelson.

What was the status of women like? Would it be right to assume that given that things like Harris’ List of Covent Garden Ladies existed (a directory of prostitutes complete with their appearance and specialities), they were objectified rather a lot?
Women were less objectified then than they are now, there’s no Georgian equivalent of the sidebar
announcing who did and did not look good in a bikini that week. The status of aristocratic women who were expected to make dynastic marriages doesn’t compare to the lives of ordinary women, many of whom worked and owned their own businesses. Female artisans worked on St Paul’s, women ran food shops and commodity warehouses, and in the Covent Garden/Strand area there were more female property owners than there are now.

How were prostitutes viewed in the eyes of the law? Was social class relevant?
Persistent street prostitutes, particularly if inebriated, would fall foul of the law and probably end up with a whipping. Neighbourhood constables (before the police force came into existence) tended to patrol very small areas, so they would know the girls on their ‘patch’, and discretion was likely the better part of valour. There were periodic attempts to clear central London of streetwalkers, but they were all unsuccessful. And yes, social class was relevant. For many women in the lower and middle classes prostitution was part-time, unlike the upper class courtesans who cultivated it as an existence.

The Temple and the many surrounding barristers’ chambers attracted middle class girls down on their luck (or possibly bored) who came and went in respectable clothing, but masked to protect their identities. Their comings and goings were tolerated. Many women, particularly in Marylebone and the more respectable edges of Soho maintained their own households through prostitution and were left alone by the magistrates. Courtesans and their employers made their own unique and often extremely lavish arrangements.

How was homosexuality viewed by society?
Although male homosexuality was illegal, it was certainly known about and, in the main, widely tolerated. The cross-dresser Princess Serafina, who was also a male nurse, was a popular figure in the Covent Garden area. Lincoln’s Inn Fields ‘boghouse’ was a well-known cottaging destination and Moorfields had the ‘Sodomites’ Walk’ cruising area, which cut right across where Finsbury Circus now stands. There was, obviously, a certain amount of mockery and homophobia but probably no more than exists now outside of London. Lesbians were, by and large, an accepted part of London society no one made too much fuss about. There’s the occasional bawdy song or rhyme, and Shoreditch had a lesbian ‘pub’ but in the main there is little comment about it, other than to note its existence.

There was a huge gap between rich and poor, child prostitution was rife and there were pastimes like bear baiting. Were they crueller times to live in, or were these problems comparable to the issues of homelessness, trafficking and child poverty that exist today?
The poverty gap was huge, yes, but I’m not sure we aren’t currently heading back to that. Homelessness was a problem, but personal direct charity was encouraged in young children, even those from families of modest means. Bear baiting had pretty much disappeared from London after the death of Charles II, it was viewed as particularly barbaric and relegated to Bankside, outside ‘civilised’ London. Horse and bull-baiting continued, as did baiting old or sick ‘exotics’, such as lions, but relatively few but a hardcore of dogbreeders and fighters had the stomach for it. The eighteenth century equivalent of pitbulls were bred especially for fighting in Clerkenwell. These dogs are bred today in Southwark and Borough; any South London park where the bark is scratched or stripped from the lower branches of the trees is being used to train dogs’ jaws for fighting. Child prostitution was no more rife in the eighteenth century than at any other time, it was just more visible as children worked the streets. There was also no internet or handy communication devices to encourage something that was widely condemned, most people living in Georgian London viewed having sex with children as abhorrent, and the penalty for having sex with an unwilling child under the age of ten was usually death. There was, however, a grey area concerning pre-adolescents (10-13ish) and consent, particularly if money or ‘gifts’ were involved. The law recognised that there will always be men who desire girls on the edge of sexual maturity and although they were punished harshly if force was involved, this grey area led to many acquittals. But then, look around on the Tube at Oxford Circus and try to find a swimwear advertisement that features a girl who genuinely looks over the age of consent. So who are we to criticise? The eighteenth century was a harsher time to live in physically. Most people would have seen more than one dead body, watched a loved one suffer from what would now be an easily curable disease, seen grotesque accidents resulting from wagon accidents or similar. We don’t have that now, but I don’t think that makes the eighteenth century crueller, just more realistic.

Which were the hotspots for the most debauched behaviour?
Covent Garden, the Strand and the area called King Street which was destroyed with the building of Westminster Bridge. As an unaccompanied woman, you wouldn’t loiter on the streets of those areas and as a man you’d watch your wallet. Old Scotland Yard was notorious as a place where people had sex up against the walls. The theatres were rowdy, and lewd behaviour pretty constant.

Coffee houses were popular meeting places, but is it true that some of them also doubled as brothels?
Not coffeehouses so much, they were places to stay sober, read the newspapers and talk business, but most taverns had ‘private rooms’ where ‘entertainment’ took place. Bagnios, or the bath-houses, usually doubled as brothels, although some were very respectable, including one run by a husband and wife and which had a weekly ‘ladies day’ so the ladies of London could have a respectable steam and massage in the ‘Eastern style’.

Was there a more liberal attitude to sex back then?
Yes and no. In a way, it was probably a bit like it is now, sex is everywhere and used to sell almost everything, yet not everyone is getting it. A certain section of society, the emerging middle class, concerned itself with respectability, but things like the ‘specialist’ section of Harris’s List and the pornography produced by dominatrix Theresa Berkeley indicate that there’s little new under the sun as far as what people want to get up to behind closed doors.

With such hedonistic behaviour, were there equivalents to modern day drugs, or was alcohol the only intoxicating substance available?
Alcohol was the most widely used intoxicant, but London has always been keen on self-medication and marijuana came in from the ships docking in Wapping. In the early eighteenth century it was the drug of choice for a teenage gang of aristocrats. Opium use was common, either smoking it or in its laudanum form.



Lucy Inglis’ first novel, City of Halves, is out now (£6.99, Chicken House).
Photo credit: Paul Clarke