Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Sex & Shopping

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

From facilitating affairs to public facilities, how has shopping changed our lives?And where did the one-stop shop, the palace of splendour and opportunity that is the department store come from?Kate talks to Erika Rappaport about the birth of shopping culture, the mark that department stores have had on our everyday lives and how exactly women could have their husbands sent to jail by buying an expensive sofa.*WARNING There is some fruity language in this episode*Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Peter Dennis.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. This is Kate Lister, jumping in as I am wont to do with yet another fair do's warning. Fair do's, this episode contains swear words and references to sex and other naughty things, and even more swear words, even though I promised my mum that I would stop swearing so much on the podcast. I just don't seem to be able to help myself. But if you can put up with all of that, then let's...

get into it. Legally blonde, clueless confessions of a shopaholic, pretty woman, oh, I could go on and on and on. How many films can you list that depict shopping as the ultimate experience for women? A place of joy and happiness, and depending on where you shop, ecstasy. But how did that happen? Because I know men like to buy stuff as well, it isn't just women, but you would have to say that our understanding of shopping as an event, as a ritual, is decidedly gendered and something that we think of women as doing. But how did that happen? When did that come about? And how did department stores come to be regarded as hotbeds of immorality and vice? Well, today, betwixt the sheets, we're going to find out.

What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the button. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I'm beautiful done. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Terry. Hello, and welcome back to the Twixter Sheets,

The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, with me, Kate Lister. Today, I am joined by Erica Port to discuss the connection between sexuality and shopping. Honestly, that's Erica's job. She researches history, sex, and shopping. My three favorite things. How cool is that? But how has dipping in your bank account

to become a sensuous experience? And I know I'm not the only one who feels like that. And how, in turn, did shops come to be seen as somewhere licentious, nay, even naughty? Well, you've come to the right place because we are going to find out. So today I am joined by somebody. I'm so excited because I get to talk about three of my favorite things

which is history, sex and shopping. Erica Rapper Pot. Hello. Hello. I love the way you put that. That's your specialty. That's how I do. Sex and shopping.

What a niche focus. And then your other book is about my other great love, tea. Tea, I know. That's just incredible. Consuming. It's all consuming one way or another. So how did you get to specialize? in sex and shopping. Where did that interest come from? You know, I've thought about that. And I grew up in

Los Angeles in the heart, you know, I was one of those teenagers that spent time in shopping malls for my entertainment. Of course, often I'd go with my friends who'd wreak havoc and not buy things, you know, I mean, or very rarely try on clothes and that sort of thing. Of course. In a way, though, I thought, oh, this is so shallow. Like as I got a little bit older and then I was in college, I'm like, this is so shallow, you know, I want to be historian and find real meaning. And then, of course, I came right back to what I knew. I had a friend who said to me, oh, you can take the girl out of the mall, but you can't take the mall out of the girl.

I think I know that world, even though I guess a love-hate relationship. Sure. As a Brit growing up in the UK, I remember watching all the American films and like the sitcoms. I'm wondering what this place, the mall was. Yeah, the mall. I suppose it's a shopping center, is the equivalent. But we didn't call it a. mall. So what would you do when you went to the mall for the day as a teenager?

Well, we used to take the bus there. I remember that, you know, before we could drive. So like young teenagers, especially, it was something to do. If you can believe it in Los Angeles, there were ice rinks. So sometimes we'd go ice skating. There was always those food courts, you know, so you'd go and eat junk food. And then, but also, of course, we'd look for boys. So that was the sex part, you know, and sort of flirt with boys. And go into stores. This must have driven, now that I think about it, must have driven the shop owners crazy because we'd go into the stores and try on clothing that, you know, we couldn't afford. Because now, it's funny now, I think about, there's like a lot cheaper clothing stores too. You know, there wasn't that much. So you would go and

go, oh, that's cool. You look good. Blah, blah, blah, then leave or buy a little bit of makeup or something like that, something small, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And they were also, now, like, think about it, they were air conditions. So when it was hot, it was kind of nice, because they're all interior, you know. Yes. I guess it was a day out. A day out. Exactly. And we didn't have any downtowns. You know, Los Angeles doesn't have that. We would do other things as well. But it was really common experience for kids.

So tell me, where did the mall come from? Because it seems like it's such a part of American consciousness. I'm all conscious, actually. Where did it come from? Because they haven't always been here. There weren't medieval peasants off to the mall. Although we haven't learned yet. No.

The mall really started after World War II in the United States. Okay. in really growing with the automobile and, you know, the idea that you drive and do all your shopping in one place. But they're always in places or they started in places where the land was fairly inexpensive. I think of it. It's the same time Disneyland developed really, too, you know, big cheap land after the war. That's a really interesting link. Yeah, all these kinds of things that, you know, of course, in the United States then, compared to Britain, the U.S. had a lot more money things, you know, really developing the consumer.

society. So they're sort of the next stage. I always think department stores are a European phenomenon and U.S. too and downtowns and then the mall's the next stage, you know. Yeah. Yeah, they needed cheap land, cheap fuel. I also think that like supermarkets, they went along with bigger homes so you could, you know, whatever you bought, you could store more, you needed more, but also big refrigerators. I mean, they didn't have food shops usually in malls, but the idea of like, go do this big shop and then bigger, better, more stuff, more stuff, more stuff. More stuff, more stuff. More stuff, more stuff, yeah. Because I'm always trying to explain to the students that I teach at university is like the amount of stuff that we've got, just stuff, is off the charts.

And it's actually quite a recent occurrence in human history. It is. My dad will tell you stories about how he had two outfits as a kid, like one for week and then one for Sunday best. The idea that you have two outfits now is just ridiculous. Yeah, I think of that. Even my house, you know, it's in Southern California, and my house was built right after the war, sort of an inexpensive for soldiers coming back. And it had one bathroom, two little bedrooms, no closet space. And I met the family who grew up there and they said, oh, yeah, we raised two sons.

And I was like, where did they put their things? No closets, you know, little armoire. And I thought, that tells you something. Right. No, they just didn't need that much. We've got so much crap. Don't get me wrong, I love buying crap. And I think that we're in a really bizarre point now. We don't even have to go to the shop anymore. Load up my phone and then push buttons and somebody brings me the crap. Brings it. Yeah.

It's amazing how it's so instantaneous now. It can be so quick. And here, I mean, we do it in the United States, but here in the UK, the food delivery and things. It's much more developed even. Instant almost gratification. Yeah. So what were people doing that, I mean, Before Deliveroo and Amazon Prime and all those things, like even before the mall, was shopping an experience?

Because obviously people have always liked to have nice stuff and like to have nice things. Yeah, people who can do it. Yes. But as an event, a pastime. It was. You know, it's different countries, but, you know, in urban places like London or Paris or other, you know, very urbanized. And also, I think you could find that in Asia. There were shopping districts, even in the early modern period, were very wealthy people.

So it would be the aristocracy going to these little shops and there'd be high-end things. So they enjoyed that and they would stroll and then go to like, you know, have a drink. And in shops, even in like the early 19th century, they used to give you like tea or alcohol or something to get you to stay there. But that was when it was very luxury, not mass. And then the middle classes really start doing that in the 19th century. And it really is in urban settings. You know, you think about, I don't know, a rural setting you would go to market town. once every few months. And it usually was the man in the family. So he probably went there with a long list.

I got to get this and this and this. So that wasn't the kind of pleasurable experience. But for women to start to shop, it's funny, it's very close to transport issues. Like you either need to live in London where things were close. Yeah. Take a horse run carriage of some sort, which is very expensive, or when the public transport really started. So second half of the 19th century, you know, when the underground opened in London, you know, then you get this sense of women where they would take a train from a count. town get on the tube and then get to the shops. So the 1880s is when it really took off. I mean, it definitely existed before, but where you'd start to see even young women. I finally, after wrote my book, I found a published diary of a young woman who lived near Liverpool, and she was a daughter of a draper and worked in the shop sometimes. In 1880, her dad just said to her, we're going to London for the weekend. And he took her on the train. She writes about everything she did. And she shopped. It was beautiful.

and they went to different kinds of, they went to the theater, and she went to the shops, flirted with the shop guys. And her dad left her alone too, which I thought was interesting. He went and bought his stuff for part of the time, and she was something like 17, 18. Interesting. Yeah. She even saw something in Earl's Court.

It was some sort of entertainment where they burned a woman as a witch at the stake, and she loved it. And it was like, whoa, this is like not my view of bourgeois culture. you know. But I think it was pretty common. And they stayed two days for the weekend, took a late train. She got in really late back home. And then she said she got up the next morning and went to Liverpool to do some shopping. I was like, whoa. She's on a shopping mission. Yeah. And I don't think it was that rare, you know. It was a particularly good diary. But the way she wrote about it wasn't like, this is so unusual. It might have been her class background that she was from this kind of shop lower middle class culture. She felt so comfortable.

Yeah. To shop, you need the money, don't you? Like, first things first. And that's really interesting what you're saying there about it being geographically accessible because I think that's something else that we forget.

Yes. It's like, well, how the hell do you get to the shops? If you don't have a horse or a donkey or something, then you're on foot. Yeah. In America and in other rural places, Oh, like just imagine your station in India or something. They did do mail order and people wrote to the shops and then they did have a service

or they'd send you things. It was really pretty developed because you couldn't get to the actual shops. I'm sure you didn't always get what you wanted. Yeah. Imagine having to write a letter to Jeff Bezos going, my sink is blocked and I need a set of sponges. Please send them immediately. Yeah. When I was a kid, the big one in America that was, there were a couple of the stores, but it was Sears.

I don't know if it exists anymore. It was just in decline, but they had huge catalogs. And even when I was a kid in the, like, I would think it would be in the 1970s. I used to read the Sears catalog at breakfast, not wanting any of the stuff, but you would look through, like, window shopping. God, I've just had a flashback then. Yes, exactly the same thing. I'm not sure which catalog it is, but I do remember just flicking three catalogs as a kid and that being quite a thing. The catalog, God, yeah, there's a flashback.

Isn't it funny that? I was like, what did I do with that? Like, why did I do that at breakfast? Yeah. So let me ask you this then. So I think that you can't deny, and this is absolutely what your research is about, that shopping is perceived as quite a gendered experience. Obviously, all genders have to buy it. But there is a real link between shopping as a pastime and women. And that is quite old. Like even Jane Austen, her characters are always going, should we go into town to buy some ribbons and all that kind of stuff? Yeah. When did that happen and why do you think that that happened? You know, it's interesting because it's true. Like I'm thinking about in the 17th century and early 18th century, aristocratic men would also go shopping, but it was very elite. So it was not gendered in the same way. And you know, that's the time where men used to wear the ribbons and the makeup and all the stuff too. The dandah. Yeah. And so then, especially in the 19th century, but it starts a little bit earlier,

you know, there's that demarcation, men go to work and women, you know, are supposed to be in the home, but you can't just sit in the home all day, you know. And it's fun. And it's, funny because men do buy things, as you say. They go to book shops and alcohol and, you know, clothing, you know, et cetera. They never call it shopping. They don't say, I'm going shopping. Even now, I don't know if a man would say I'm going shopping. Like, they might say, I'm going to go buy something. And then they do all the same stuff. But there are so many more shops for women, too. But in the 19th century, when, you know, gender was so divided. Everything about a man and a woman is supposed to be different, you know, down to your biology. Your daily life was organized,

differently. Middle-class men used to work in the home, too. You know, like a doctor or a lawyer would have an office in a home or live above their shop. But they really started to shift where men had to go to an office, you know, and commute to work, even if it was close. That's in the mid-19th century where it shifts where men start to literally leave the home to go to work, middle-class men, and of course working men did. And middle-class women were supposed to take care of the home, make it nice. And you'd say, well, they didn't do the cleaning. They all had servants. So there actually wasn't much housework or stuff to do. You know? Yes, that's true. They wrote their letters. They entertained friends. They went to church. They did their charity work. But they had a lot of time on their hands. And almost all women, middle class women, would go shopping. You know, it started in the 19th century. That's interesting. It's part of the organization of the day. But also, there was this sense that things like fabric and silk and self and all that is very feminine. You know, and the spaces were seen as very feminine and very threatening to a man's masculinity.

I've like cartoons where the husband is going with his wife to shop and like sitting there on some chair, just looking very, very uncomfortable. Wow. You could still get that in 2022. You definitely can. I was in Edinburgh. I saw these men sitting on all these chairs waiting for their girlfriends and things while they were shopping and they're all on their phone now. Actually, department stores were a real innovation because they put in men's departments. They had like barber shops and like little men's clubs trying to make space for men. They knew and they'd say, We know you're uncomfortable in the shops. But while your wife is doing your shopping, you can come and start to shop too. But if you notice in department stores or any large shops, they put the men's departments, usually on the ground floor. And they even design that so you'd get in, get out.

You wouldn't have to go through the store to linger. Yeah. So they're like, you know, socks and gloves and all those things that men, you know, need. They're just going and buy it and leave. But I did see pictures of like the opening of Selfridges where there were lots of men looking. They wouldn't admit it they were interested, you know. Yeah, and it's a weird concept that because, of course, men buy stuff. They love buying stuff.

I don't know any man that doesn't enjoy gadgets and bits and pieces turning up. Oh, yes. And endless stuff. They're not stood there with absolutely no possessions whatsoever and their wife just going, here are your trousers now. Men buy stuff. They buy stuff. And they always did.

And even like in an earlier period, they would be the ones to go to the shops and get all the stuff. but you'd never hear them say I'm going shopping as a leisure time. I'll phoning up their friends going, Would you like to go shopping? Now that I can't imagine. Maybe they do. Maybe there's men listening to this going, how dare you? I absolutely phono.

Yeah, no, that's true. Maybe, maybe. But I read a lot of trade magazines, trade journals. I tried different ones. Like, my favorite one was the progressive confectioner. So it was for the confection shopkeeper. The progressive confectioner. Wow.

Very modern. There's a lot of progressive shoemakers and things, but the clothing ones, which still, some of them, like the draper is still around online now, they in the 1890s and 1900s, I remember a debate saying, are draper's assistants effeminate? And in other words, is this becoming, and it was right around time of the Oscar Wild, you know, they really took off then where they started seeing, I'm like, oh, do we have queer culture, you know, where the shop. men are queer, you know, as that developed. And, you know, it's hard to find the evidence of that.

But they were certainly wondering. And then their debate was, why would that be the case? Is it being around women? Is it being around fabric? They were saying the fabric must do it. Must do it. Must rub off on them. Yeah. And I wonder, because there's a really long history of young women working in dress shops, having strong associations with selling sex to the point where millin is, it was like a buy word for a sex work. and the same in France as well, maybe it was that. It was like, well, you know, if they're selling sex, what are these young men doing here as well? I don't know.

Yeah. And those young women were supposed to look well dressed, put together, you know, I mean, that was part of it. So it was the idea of like kind of demonstrating like a shop girl. They're not supposed to look like the wealthier customers that came in, but be very presentable and modern. And then in the 20th century, that was the case. You know, they'd be wearing the fashionable things that are in the shop. But, yeah, the men, it's interesting.

I mean, in London, there was a pretty developed queer culture early. And in some of the restaurants, there's a famous Alliance Corner House that used to be at Piccadilly had eight floors with different kinds of food and ambiance. And one of them was supposed to be a queer, you know, hang out. And that was early on. So it's possible, you know, just like any profession, people start to feel comfortable and then their friends doing it. And, you know, maybe the women shopping felt more comfortable, not sure. And you still have professions that have that kind of, I know this is stereotypical and I know it's bullocks, but it's. still true. Like a male airline steward has associations of being feminine or a male hairdresser. So maybe

that's kind of what we're seeing here. Yeah, the associations with serving women. Serving women. Yeah. That's interesting. I've often thought like the idea that men don't like to shop. It's like you do like to shop. But it's sort of conditioned to be, it's a mark of your masculinity to pretend that you don't have a clue about shopping. Yes. That's the idea, right? Exactly. Yeah. Like, oh no, I don't do that. I'd give a paper and a conference and some. Men would say, oh, yes, my wife loves to shop, but I don't. Constantly, they'd say that. I said, does she?

Maybe she doesn't really. She does it because she's supposed to. But they often said that. I would get confessions from feminist scholars also who secretly say to me, oh, you know, I love to shop for shoes. So the men are feeling ashamed of it and the feminists feel like they're letting the team down. Yes. Oh, my God.

But there are legal reasons that men stopped shopping too because basically women, married women, before they were responsible for their own property, you know, all their property would go to their husband when they married. You actually couldn't sue them for debts. And so you could go to a shop, you know, buying credit as everyone did. And the husband could be sued. Like the creditors could go after the husband, but not the wife. Oh, wow. And so if the husband was there in the shop, he was immediately responsible. It was the idea that you're obviously condoning this behavior. If you weren't in the shop and you weren't there, you could sort of say, I didn't know what my wife was doing. And the whole lot was really funny in Britain.

If it was something that the shopper or the plaintiff could say is a luxury item, then the husband wasn't responsible for luxuries, only necessities. So the more expensive, the shopping, you know. And so then that shopmen would always say, oh, that's a necessity. Women of this class need have for a coat. I know. Oh, I love that. That's brilliant. These diamonds are absolutely a necessity. Yeah. I did find one case where a woman wanted to get her husband in prison and she used this method and got the creditors to put them into debtors prison. Oh my God. I'm sure it happened more often than not.

But I thought, that's interesting how the laws were kind of shaping. And then eventually, basically these shopmen sort of supporting women's right to their own property so they could sue them. You know, they said, you can't just have these women running around and not being legally responsible for what they're doing. No, that's a terrible idea. The idea of letting me. me loose in a shopping mall with no responsibility whatsoever going, oh my, I think the hospital will pay, that's a disaster. I'll be back with Erica after this short break. Did you know that some of literature's greatest characters were real people? It's so fascinating, isn't it, that some of the three musketeers are also based on real soldiers?

That Sir Walter Raleigh wasn't all that he's been cracked up to be. chemist, poets, scholar, historian, courtier. He could have been great in all these different things. And that if your name is Dudley, you better watch your back. For the tutors, each one of them took something from the Dudleys, either by working with a member of the Dudley family or, of course, by having one executed. I'm Professor Susanna Lipskin,

and I'm learning all this and much more bringing you not just the tutors, twice a week, every week. Subscribe now to No! Not just the tutors from history hit, wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things I do want to talk about is this idea of space and about safe spaces for women. This is really important, and I'm sure you can explain this better than I can. But for much of the history, the space for women was in the home, and there was limited spaces that a woman could go to.

So if a woman went to a bar, there was all kinds of connotations for that. That's not respectable or good. And there's very few spaces. You could go at home, you could go at your charity thing, you could go at church. And the shop was suddenly a new space that it was safe for women to go to. Is that right? Yes. Yeah.

And I think that was really most of the appeal is literally the sense of being in public and the pleasure of seeing people and being out. But feeling like you wouldn't be harassed by men. Because there, of course, was a lot of street harassment and sexual harassment. The shop girls were harassed by men. They used to stab them with hatpins, didn't they? I read that somewhere. Yes.

That was quite a common thing. It was amazing. And there were tensions in those kinds of issues, sexual harassment. But for most middle class women, you're right, there wasn't a place. I mean, obviously they had no educational opportunities, no place to go. And then very few were working. So there was, you know, the park, but even the park wasn't always safe. Definitely shops were, and the bigger they got and the more like department stores really marketed themselves is this is a woman's place.

This is a safe place to come. Not only did they have very feminine decor, but, you know, safe, like women's, like I want to say women's restaurants. They weren't. Men could go in, but the food was all very, they'd always describe it as dainty. I love that word dainty. You see that cropping up in everything from descriptions of cake to things like vaginal douche. Yes, dainty. That would be a great thing to explore more because we don't use that word anymore. We don't do it. And if somebody said you would date, like you wouldn't want something to be dainty, but go back to the 19th century and in the 20th century and everything's dainty. Yeah. You can have a dainty tea. You can have a dainty

tea, and it was described sometimes on menus. So I think that meant respectable, but also gendered for women. You know, not too big, maybe pretty, something like that. But definitely men didn't order dainty things, you know. Oh, God, no. But the women would go, and they even had, I mean, I did this whole thing on public toilets because you couldn't be in public for too long in a big city if you weren't near your home or a friend's home, because if you had to pee, there were no public toilets.

Oh, my God. I had never thought of that. In department stores, they still have those beautiful toilets generally, you know, and they'd have little restrooms attached to them. And, you know, even places where there would be a dressmaker could fix something if something went wrong on your dress. So it was like all surveying women's bodily needs. It was one diary where the woman said, you know, women didn't wear underwear in the 19th century. They would wear those kinky minkie things. But you can basically, especially with the dresses when they had the big, like 1860s, you imagine the big crinoline where the dress was very large.

She said, oh, we just stand in the street and pee. And I'm like, what? Yeah, Jane Austen missed that. Yeah. But I think that was something like the crinoline allowed that because it sort of take all the fabric away and, you know. I mean, like when you've got to go, you've got to go. And if there aren't public toilets,

and even if there are toilets in people's houses, they tend to be public latrines or a chamber pot. So I suppose, my God, yeah. So that would really keep you at home, you know? I mean, it really, you know, you'd go out for an hour or something like that. So there was even a feminist group, God, what were they called the Ladies Latrine Association? I can't remember exactly.

Oh my God. But they advocated for, you know, actual public state sponsored toilets, which they did start to put in and like, you can even see them still in London, you know, or parks and New York. Any big city was like the idea that you're away from home. You just don't think about this stuff when you're thinking about social history. Something just simple as that. Where are you going to pay?

Yeah. It's funny because I really got into it. And part of it was I remember doing work at Westminster City Archives, which is now all beautiful and has toilets and everything, but it used to be all divided. And they didn't have public bathrooms in the archive. And you had to go to the train station. I remember going to Victoria Station, like walking.

So I would sit there and like, oh, okay, how long am I going to work before I go to the bathroom? But, you know, it became really real. Like, yeah, actually, it's very restrictive. And obviously, if women get sick or something, too. But yeah, feminists would talk about this, you know, because the men would either just pee in the street or they go to a pub. You know, I mean, it was just like everywhere for them.

And that really sparked a lot of growth of things like women's clubs. And again, it was elite women that could join those. But obviously they had toilets and places you could eat. And tea shops. I think tea shops really fit that bill. Go get a little something. Don't spend too much money, but they had toilets and also were very feminine. So a whole cluster of institutions that would start to serve your, I think about it more and more,

your bodily needs are important in public, you know. They are, aren't they? That's like a whole history that I've never actually thought of before. Like, you get caught short somewhere. You know, and then that became commercialized as well because you literally spend a penny. That's the title for a great book on this. Yeah, spend a penny. Yeah, spending a penny.

How public toilets shaped Britain. Yeah, and the world, I mean, they talk about it still in India today, right? Well, in India, they think about sometimes public toilets are considered unsafe for women. You know, there's a whole debate on that, but we've had them in the West since the 19th century. And it was always the same Germany, you know. In France, any urban areas of Europe were similar. They all kind of come around the same time. But it was sort of...

Toilets were defined as really feminine because men were already well served. Yeah, they can just go anywhere. Honestly, we should just do a whole other episode on the history of toilets. That's incredible. But the idea of the department store, so it's clearly being set up as a, quote, quote, dainty feminine space with all these things that they have.

Yes. At any point, was it seen as set? sexy because you do a lot around sexuality. Was it seen as a naughty place to go? Because like what you said, being a teenager at the mall and kind of flirting with people. It did have that kind of, you know. I think it really did. And there are different ways that it did. So the shop assistants, the female shop assistants that worked in the stores, usually the stores put them up in kind of dormitories, often not like in the store, but nearby. So they would. Yeah. Probably that changed around World War II. But those girls were also seen as kind of naughty and more sexually forward and, you know, advanced.

But also sometimes, you know, the girls didn't like it too. Or the parents were worried that they were going to learn things. So the shop girls were always, in fact, there's a whole book on this. They were seen as kind of the advanced, sexy, having a new glamour, you know, right from the 1890s into the 1920s. And they're in that space, again, that public space. Yeah. I mean, there's a zillion West End play. that all had girl titles.

And the shop girl was a really famous one. That was one that was on for years and then came back on the West End. And the fantasy for the shop girl is they're going to be dressed nicely and meet a wealthy man. So they couldn't be married as they worked there, you know. But the idea is, you know, hopefully a good-looking man will come in. And there's paintings even I have. Tiso has this famous painting where a shop girl is like a man's looking at her. The shop girl's like opening the door.

Clearly the woman's supposed to leave the shop. And the shop girl and the husband are flirting, you know. And there's like ribbon all dripping behind them. So it's all very suggestive. Sensual, yeah. But young women often meant, you know, boyfriends that their parents didn't approve of. They'd meet them in the shops. There's stories of women who met their lovers, you know, married women who'd meet their lovers and things in the shop.

So it was anonymous, you know, so you could get away with things. So they were sexy spaces. But also right-wing, what we call now right-wing conservatives who opposed to modernity. thought department stores were just this most sinful thing on earth. Really? Yeah. Especially actually in, like, Germany, there were whole movements, you know, against department stores.

In Germany, they were often Jewish owned. And so, but the idea was they were like, husbands were being cuckled it because their wives' money was taking, you know, like they were luring the wife away from the home, you know, wow. Luring them to spend the husband's money. And so, oh, like, I mean, Zola has his famous, oh, Bonard de Dam, you know, the Ladies Paradise, famous novel. And in that novel, the owner of the shop, ultimately he has a relationship with the shop girl and wants to have sex with her out of marriage.

And she refuses until she finally gets him to propose so she could be madame, you know, and own the store. Well played. So she plays it really well. But there's a lot of people meeting their lovers. But the sense that the department stores, it's both a feminine space but also the place that's sort of heterosexual. Yeah. It probably wasn't other than those shop men. but I think people did use them as places to meet, you know, because it was like, where else could they?

Yeah, exactly. Where else could they? I mean, you can't go to the pub because that would be seen as scandalous. Everybody would know you. And women couldn't go into the pub. You're just immediately seen as a prostitute if you go in as a single woman. There were restaurants that wouldn't allow any single woman into the restaurant because they would assume you're a prostitute if you're by yourself. And maybe she just wants a sandwich and to use the loo.

Yeah. That's why, yeah, in the tea shops, but yeah, there were. plenty of the early West End restaurants were not, you wouldn't feel comfortable anyways, but they actually wouldn't let you in the door. Wow. So the shop is, no wonder, like, it's a sociable space. Yeah, the theater was the same. The theater was considered kind of naughty.

Matinees were targeted towards women when they started. Yeah. So it's not like women love to shop. It's like they had no alternative. They didn't know where to go. I mean, you could go to church, but that's not known for its pickup potential. And women often lied and said they were going shop. and then probably did other things too. Of course they did. You know, but it was an excuse,

or they'd say they're going to go to their charity. And they're actually off to have a dainty sandwich. So obviously, the people building these early department stores have got to kind of counteract the idea that they're building dens of sin and iniquity. But who was the first person to build the department store? What was the first department store? It's funny. It's a big debate between American historians, French historians and British historians. Oh, right. Okay. Here we go. The Americans did have these big shops in the 1830s that, you know, started to grow. So they were, again, they had the space, I think, in, you know, in New York as the New York was moving north from what is now, you know, Wall Street in those areas. So those stores were very large and were very attractive.

But then British historians say Wedgwood had, you know, they still have Wedgwood pottery. He had a beautiful, luxurious shop in the 18th century where he did say, I'm thinking about how to make a shop feminine and beautiful and luxurious, a place you'd want to come. And he said, literally in his letters, like, I want to seduce the ladies. So he was, like, very advanced and his shops were beautiful. So 18th century historians will say, no, actually London, we were the city of shopkeepers, but they weren't department stores, you know, it would be one type of good. And were there any 18th century teenagers going, yeah,

I was going to go and hang out at the Wedgwood shop? It's a little bit harder, but I suspect they might have. By ourselves a gravy boat. Yeah. The pictures of it was very glass, you know, big glass. It was obviously before electricity, but he really did a nice job. And there were some other ones like that. But the first apartment stores, so there were some, you know, in Paris, they started mid-19th century.

And it is, Beaumarchais is like one of the earliest. That was huge. And then here in the UK, really, it's a debate, but I think it was really, you could say Whiteleys was the first. It was just a little draper shop, but started to expand really quickly and kept having fires, which I think I guess it's easy to do with candles. Is that suspicious at all? Yeah, the insurance company started to wonder. It's another fire, is it, Mr. Whitley? Right, okay.

Yeah, and then he would build a new bigger shop. That was more luxurious and then another one. But by the 1870s, he called himself the universal provider. That's a claim. Yeah, and I think for me, department store was partly when it expanded, not just women's stuff, but actually did have children's shops or men's things. What really got people, the difference was having food, you know, luxury sort of gourmet food hall type things and clothing in the same store because you would never do that before. You know, it's a totally different trade.

God, yeah, of course. Yeah. And Whiteley's, it was 1872. I think he put in this little restaurant for women and all the neighbors went nuts. They said he was serving alcohol to women and then they would get drunk, you know, and that was it. And they did claim, oh, it's like prostitution. Prostitutes will go there. But I remember they said you'll have lily-pucian bottles of champagne, and God knows what will happen after that.

That's like, when you go back through the records and you just like, right, so their definition of a woman that sold sex, a sinful woman, is a woman that went to a shop on her own and had a glass of beer. Yeah. Wow. Okay. And it's right there. I used the local newspapers that was the Bayswater Chronicle. I mean, it was all the local shopkeepers were really angry. They saw them as like Amazon.

It was going to destroy their livelihood. Oh, wow, that's interesting. In the end, it brought people because, you know, tourists would go and look at the shop. And then he inspired others. I mean, Herod's is pretty early, but that big store that's there now was Edwardian, you know. Actually, that one got bigger after Selfridges opened in 1909. So Selfridges was American. And many British people said that's the first department store.

But I'm like, no, you actually have them. There's plenty of them, Debenams, all the, you know, Harvey Nichols. They were all. And I was walking down Tottenham Court Road yesterday. And actually there are huge furniture stores in London that were also luxurious. And you could go through and see like a living room laid out. So they weren't quite the same, but they were also pretty luxurious. So they were kind of emerging around about the same time.

Yeah, the same time. If you build it, they will come. Yeah, because I think about, you know, in the early 19th century, the problem was how to make things, you know, and especially Britain got very good at that, right, with the Industrial Revolution and learning how to make mass-produced things. But pretty soon, right around, especially the 1870s, they went, uh-oh, we have more stuff than we can sell. A department store or a big shop like that is thinking about, okay, how do we make consumers,

you know, and how do we get people to buy more than two outfits? And now with my book on tea, it was the same thing. At first it was hard to figure out how to get the land for plantation, how to grow tea, how to make it. And then by the 1870s, they're like, wow, we really know how to do this. Now we need people to drink it. Drink it. So then they got very early on thinking about how to create markets.

how to make it luxurious, you know, all over the world. And they're like, how much tea would somebody drink? Oh, a lot. All the British went challenge accepted. Yes, exactly. So let me finish off by asking you, because this has just been so fascinating. But what is the future for shopping? Because especially after what's happened with the pandemic,

because obviously we are showing no signs of slowing down with wanting to buy stuff. In fact, it's rocketed. Yeah. The idea of the physical space, the location, the destination, that you go out. I mean, the high street's dying, isn't it? The high street is absolutely dying. And it's everywhere. Everywhere I've been, I was in Spain recently.

Same thing. United States, I mean, my town is kind of a tourist town, so the high street's important and half the shops are closed. And you see everywhere, right, they're not having the staff that we need. You know, there were big stories with all these big department store chains dying before COVID. And they blamed internet shopping. And big toy stores have died as well, which is sad because kids would go and play with the toys, right? I remember doing that actually as a kid.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's the same thing. That's dying. And then if nobody wants to go downtown, like if half the stores aren't there, you're not going to go downtown. So it's funny. It's not like I want a consumer society. I'm worried about our environment that that causes and what have you.

But sitting in your home ordering something online is lonely. It's not pleasurable. It's not, as you say, or people are on their phone. It's not social. The women that I studied did actually start to go to clubs and learn more about the world. And many of them did, you know, become feminist and say, hey, like the shops would ask for their money, but then not support their right to vote. So women did start to see the, you know, like it's politicizing to be in public, you know.

Like I recently was in Portland, which was a beautiful, famous downtown. And it was just completely shut, just nothing. And then it was the first time I've ever been in a downtown where I didn't feel. safe even in the daytime because of not people around. So I'm very worried about that because what kind of society are we going to have if we don't have any sense of downtown? In the U.S., it might be the mall, but they're also, they're suffering closing down. And it's not just shops either, is it? Bars and pubs are closing down as well as all of these public spaces that we did have to physically go to. Yeah. So I think you can't take consumption out of the

mix of how we understand how we live our lives and what the space is like. And so some places are trying to try to put in event centers and have, you know, a theater or these, I don't know if they have them here, but I've seen them even in my town, temporary offices. Like you rent the office for the day. Yeah, yeah. Well, now people aren't even going their offices. So the idea of retreating to the home, it's a little bit strange. Yeah. It took us hundreds of years to get out of it. And now we're slowly regressing to just living at home, ordering stuff and then working on our laptop. Yeah. And so many of these big companies know they're going to save money, having employees at home. And then all the shops and restaurants and everything that serve those employees are dying. That's strange too. So I'm not sure. It really is an actual problem. Like if I was an urban planner, I think now's the time to really, how could you make a life that's more sustainable and not, you know, so consumer oriented, but still it is social and like the Parisian cafe. That's a good one. You know, we need more Parisian cafes. I suppose what would have to change is, it's not the function of it really is to buy stuff anymore because we can do that on the sofa.

We need to re-energize. It's like, well, why do we go and do that because it's a social thing? Yeah. I wonder about like northern cities, former factory towns and things, how they've used their space because, of course, factories were huge. In places like Detroit, the same kind of like an industrial town, they were dying for really long time and artists are moving in because it's an inexpensive real estate, right? So you can have a studio and say a lot of young people are starting to move because, of course, other cities are so expensive.

So that's exciting to me. That's an interesting thing, isn't it? Yeah. It's funny, you know, in Detroit, which is a very cold climate. There's also a lot of inside urban gardening where they're working on how to grow. See, I like that. I like that, too. And I think just from talking to you, one thing that I can pick up is there's always been a fear that something new has come in to replace what was there before, that it's going to be a design.

disaster. Yeah. Whether it was like the big shopping centers were going to replace the smaller shops or whether it was internet was going to replace the big department stores. And it reinvents, doesn't it? So maybe it's not completely hopeless. It's going to be something new. Yes, it could be.

Because you think, oh, my gosh, there's something that is about like urban public life. And it can be even in a small town. But if it's, you know, public life that is sort of sexy, even if it's not sexual. Yeah. It's like the essential experience of going. someplace looking at people, might eat a little something. And that does seem like sitting at home is not going to be the same. Not very sexy, no. Yeah. Well, I'll be gardening. And I love the idea of the artists. And I know that's true in other former industrial cities that just have nothing else going on.

I love that. Well, I mean, let's hope so. Because it would be a shame if we lost this part of ourselves. I mean, we've only just got to the point we can go into a department store pee and have a cup without somebody denouncing you as a whore. We don't want to throw all of our good workouts. Oh, I like that. You've been such an absolute pleasure to talk to. If people want to learn more about you and more about your work, Erica, where can they find you?

Well, I'm at University of California at Santa Barbara, so you can just Google me, but also my books are on Amazon, and so you can easily find them. We can go to a shop. Go to a shop. Go to a shop. There's still book shops. The first book title, it's Shopping. for pleasure, women in the making of London's West End. And it's still around and you can get it

pretty inexpensively. And the T-1 one is a thirst for empire. How tea shaped the modern world? I always forget. But if you like tea and shopping, that's a good combination. I can't recommend the book and those pastimes enough. Erica, thank you so much for joining me. It's been so much fun talking to you. Oh, thank you. It's been my pleasure. I hope that you've enjoyed this episode with Erica. How much fun was that. If you like what you've heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Join me again betwixt the sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit.