Libertine London

Sexing A Paragrab

Libertine London - 
Sex In The 
Eighteenth-Century Metropolis
By Julie Peakman
Reaktion Books Ltd
ISBN 9781789148473

Just a quick shout out for a delightful book I was gifted a couple of Christmases ago and, because of various issues in my life (such as an overabundance of new books to read), I have only now just got to indulge in. Subtitled Sex In The Eighteenth-Century Metropolis, the tome Libertine London by sexual historian Julie Peakman (now there’s a candidate for nominative determinism if ever I saw one) is a stunning tour through the streets, gardens, palaces and brothels of the time and it’s extremely interesting, especially if you live in the capital as I do and know many of the streets in question. 

So the book starts out explaining the vast gap between male and female libertines and then, as it goes chapter by chapter through the book, makes clear a kind of hierarchy of so called ‘fallen women’. Such as the differences between streetwalkers, bawds, courtesans, strumpets, mistresses and so on. It also goes through the repercussions of the various ‘choices’ made by the ladies in question, how they were publicly perceived and, often as not, publicly punished for their position in society. Some became famous, some made their fortune several times over... many were not lucky enough to do either and came to a sticky end. But whatever their final fate, Peakman paints their tales in a sympathetic and informative fashion... and you can really tell she’s done her research. 

And when I say informative, some areas were truly enlightening. 

For instance, I knew just from logically breaking down the silliness of the male mind that sex workers selling their trade from a bawdy house or brothel could fetch more money from a client at the time if they were deemed a virgin. So I assumed many lied about their sexual status to increase the purse but I didn’t realise to what lengths they would go to fake their virginity... such as the stitching up of their hymen. Or, as in the case of the fictional Fanny Hill but, obviously drawn from the real life practice, going down to the local butcher with a sponge and soaking up some blood so, in the heat of their customer’s passion, they could quickly splash the blood from the sponge now secreted in their room onto their vagina to make good on their claim and up the price.

The book uses transcripts from legal documents and cases to build a picture of some of the women who populate this magnificent tome, describing what it was like to live in a London fraught with peril where robbery, rape and violence ruled the streets and back alleys. Peakman also uses popular printed pamphlets and books about various women, sold on the streets at the times, to cross reference and validate some of the details of the biographies but, not all is taken as seriously as the original writers would have liked, as there was obviously a lot of spice added to the ‘accounts’ sold for public consumption at the time. 

And the book is also handsomely illustrated with various items such as full colour reproductions of famous paintings of many of the ladies discussed herein (many of which I imagine hang in galleries to this day) and also things like newspaper pages and satirical cartoons of the time, commenting on the various stories of specific ladies being discussed. 

Such interesting details come to light such as the fact that if a bawdy house did not contain any beds, then there was no obvious evidence to the law that it was a brothel. Or that the celebrated courtesans of their day, such as actresses and ladies receiving ardent admiration from people higher up the food chain such as governors or royalty, were pretty much seen as the pin up girls of their day. It talks about the way that the better off courtesans of the day could hire a box at the theatre so that suitors could line up to engage their activities for later in the evening, for example. And I was also interested and, somewhat, mollified that the medical profession was just as distrusted in those times as it seems to be becoming again now, in these days of post-pandemic distrust of our governmental resources like the much maligned but somewhat hard to negotiate auspices of the NHS. 

And that’s me just about done with Libertine London - Sex In The Eighteenth-Century Metropolis, other than to say I found this one really interesting and am actively seeking out other books by Peakman in a similar vein (a recent trip to Foyles snagged me a nice hardback copy of her volume Licentious Worlds so, that’s another in the queue). If you’re interested in this kind of subject matter you will surely find the rewards between the covers as illuminating as I.