Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The REAL Bridgerton: Georgian Sex

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

The long-awaited third season of Bridgerton is here! And with it, we all become obsessed with a particularly sexy version of Regency-era history.Today's episode is the first in our mini-series on the REAL Bridgerton. Across four episodes we'll uncover Georgian attitudes to drugs and alcohol, insights into the celebrities of the time, and a re-cap on the historical accuracies of the latest season.First and foremost, though, what was sex really like in Georgian England? How effective were the fashionable animal gut condoms? And what erotica were people enjoying?Today's guests are Catherine Curzon, Kate Stephenson, Julie Peakman and Katie Wignall.This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Dearest gentle listener, today I have something very special for you. You may have heard that London's fashionable set have returned for the new series of Bridgeton. You've seen their love stories, watched their decadent parties, and you've met the Royals and High Society darlings. But today we're stripping back all the tellers. televised glamour and finding out about the real Bridgeton.

Sex, drugs and celebrities in 18th century Britain. From the real-life dating taboos in the Georgian period... It's this thing that if you had one dance with a man at a ball, that's fine. Two dancers signalled you were getting close. Three dancers, you may as well be married because everyone was going to be like, whoa. To partying and letting loose. These glitzy sort of or neat, gas-lit. drinking venues that sprang up in cities around the country

where you don't sit down with your pals and have a drink. You're standing at the bar and you're having shots of gin. The It Girls and Boys of the Time. So Lord Byron is basically a rock star of his day. And of course, it wouldn't be Bridgeton without all the steamy sex. There starts to be the production of animal gut condoms. They were reusable, not forever, but certainly for multiple times. Bridgeton is one of the most popular historical series of all time.

But how accurate is it? Wet shirts and Empire Waste dresses at the ready, this season is about to begin. This is The Real Bridgeton, Episode 1, Georgian Sex. P.S. we're covering adult themes in this episode, so if you're not old enough to watch Bridgeton, fair do's, you're probably not old enough to be listening to this. And trust me, the real Georgian.

were much filthier than anything you see on TV. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, with me, Kate Lister. Now, I don't know about you, oh lovely Betwixta, but I am feeling very regal all of a sudden. Could it be the orchestra playing, the elaborate gown, or the spectacularly oversized wig? Or maybe, just maybe,

it's the fact that a new series of everyone's favourite sexy historical drama, Bridgeton, has dropped this week. Yes, it's that time when everybody suddenly becomes fascinated by the Georgian period, myself included. Or, if we're being really, really honest with ourselves, we become fascinated by a cast of spectacularly sexy actors in various states of undress, all pretending to be Georgian. That's more accurate, isn't it? And whilst it's absolutely thrilling to be swept into this world, we thought that this would be the perfect time to explore the truth of Georgian Britain

and to get behind all of those indulgences that you will be seeing on screen. Over the next few weeks, we will find out all about the real Bridgeton, from drugs and alcohol to notions of celebrity and the all-important royalty. First and foremost, though, and of the utmost importance, if you ask me,

is sex during this period? And let's be honest, that might have the teeniest, tiniest, contribution to why Bridgeton is such a smash hit. So how was sex thought of in the Georgian period? Who was having it? Who wasn't having it? And what were the consequences? How did you deal with an STI?

Spoiler, there's no queuing up at the sexual health clinic for Colin, that's for sure. To set the scene, let's hear from Catherine Curzon, author of Inside the World of Bridgeton to find out about the dating world in Georgian Britain. Corsets and pig gut condoms at the ready betwixters. Let's do it. One of the key parts of Bridgeton, apart from the nice frocks and the sex, a lot of it hinges on reputation, doesn't it?

And about this delicate balance that everybody is doing between, I really like sex and I want to have sex, I definitely want to have sex, and this very handsome person over here, but nobody can know about it. This weird dance that they do. How accurate is that to actual regency time periods? because clearly reputation wasn't really an issue for the prince

because he's the prince and he'll do what the fuck he likes. But what about sort of the more landed aristocracy that you see in Bridgeton? How important was reputation? It was very, very important, but you, I'm sure, will not be surprised to know that it was a completely different set of rules if you're a man to if you're a woman. So if you're a man, your reputation was pretty much, are you rich? Have you got a title?

Do you just have some money? Yeah, in which case, you know, If it's yes to pretty much either of those, then... Fine. Okay, you can... It was this weird thing if you could behave appallingly so long as you behaved appallingly with some discretion. It's weird out there, isn't it?

Because it's like that people knew, but they're not supposed to know. And it's like, at what point does the damn breach and it becomes an open secret? As soon as, you know, a woman put literally, in some cases, a foot in the wrong place, that's it, it's over. So, you know, it's this thing that if you had one dance with a man at a ball, that's fine. two dancers signalled you were getting close

three dancers you may as well be married because everyone was going to be like whoa wow so it was that that much of a thing and as I say for women once you lost your reputation it's gone forever the marriage market is incredibly important in the regency period I mean it really is up until really quite recently

when women have been able to earn in theory their own money you have to get married pretty like your options for women are pretty fucking limited. Even if you are working class and you can go and maybe try and earn pittance, you're not going to earn enough

to be able to sustain yourself. You need to have the support of a man who can earn more money than you. And that's just kind of universal. Unless you've inherited the money, unless you're an heiress, or hopefully a widow, which I think is what everyone was hoping for.

Like marry rich and then he dies within a year and then you just like, woo! Yay! Honestly, it's so wholesome this setup. And you see that in Jane Austen, don't you? The obsession with getting married, under that level of pressure of get married, get married, get married, get married,

but don't let anyone think that you're slutty. Did they know anything about sex before they got married? Bridgeton kind of suggests that people knew when it was a bit saucy, but did they know about sex before marriage? Well, in Bridgeton, there's a moment where Daphne is sort of schooled, only verbally schooled by a friendly sort of maid who's been there, done that, you know, and she tells all about it. But we don't actually get much indication that women were. And really, unless your mother was quite forward looking, I think, or unless you were lucky enough to maybe an elder sister or a member of staff, certainly my research, which has been upper class and royal mostly, there wasn't a whole lot of instruction. It was that old chestnut of, you know, itchy duty. Lie back, think of,

think of handbags. Think of empire lying gown. Think of the jewels. That's what my My mother told me, lie back and think of jewelry. That's not true. That's not true. My mum is a respectable woman. But you're absolutely right that you pretty much had to get married. You have to get married. Yeah.

There's an awful but, you know, tellable story of the richest commoner in England. Catherine Tilney Long, who inherited her father's fortune. There was no son. But she immediately became the target of the worst fortune hunters. Of course. Europe really. And among them was the Duke of Clarence, later William the 4th. He was 25 years older than her. And she eventually fell for, you know, you were saying men can have a reputation. She fell for a rake who was William Wellesley Pole, who became nickname Mr Longpole. Oh, hello. Miss Wright, okay.

Yeah. And he absolutely wooed her. You know, when members of his family, sorry, needed medical care. he did mercy dashes miles on horseback to bring doctors. And he danced with her and he performed. Pretty slick, isn't it? Acrobatics on horseback and all of that. Oh, did he? And almost as soon as she married him, he started spending. And he burned through this fortune.

She'd inherited Wonstead House. It was one of the great houses of England. He burned through the fortune to the extent they had to sell it and all its contents. He openly cheated on her. He lived with another woman. And it wasn't until he started saying, I'm going to take the kids off you. Wow. That that was it.

And he absolutely ruined her. He gave her multiple STIs. Oh. And she died really young. And pretty much by the standard she was at in penury, because he had just burned through this fortune. And it's one of those awful stories that the sad part of it is that after she died, the press kind of said, well, you know, women, you should learn a lesson from this.

you should be more careful who you marry. I think that's the thing that we sort of forget about as well is that when you married, in most of history in the West, is everything you had, including yourself, now belong to your husband. So even though this poor woman had some serious bank on her own, as soon as she signs that contract, it's his. All of it is his. Yeah.

And she had an allowance, which was really generous, but he took that as well. And a lot of the time that you could inherit these great fortunes, often they would be placed in the trust of a male relative. Right. That's pretty much what saved her from absolute ruin. They sort of kept back some money. But ultimately, when it was given to her,

he would bully it out of her anyway. And this was often the case that the money was placed in trust by men because you, as a woman, couldn't be trusted to manage your own money. Christ, oh, my. And yeah, that was it. You were done for. And, you know, if something went horribly wrong, your husband could divorce you and he would keep everything you brought to that marriage.

Wow. Where people often think that when we watch Bridgeton, they think, oh, it's like women looking for rich husbands. But there were loads of men looking for rich wives, well-connected wives, women with a big fat dowry. It certainly wasn't, you know, all kind of like women fluttering their eyelashes of men. It was a lot of men floating their eyelashes. This is business, isn't it? Yeah, it is. When you kind of boil it down to it, especially when you're dealing with anyone with a level of money or someone

that need money or anything like that. Marriage is business. As soon as you've signed that contract on the dotted line, that's what everybody's looking out for. So it certainly isn't just women fluttering their eyelids,

but it's definitely women that pay the greater price if their reputation is impugned. And as well, if you were, once you were married, obviously there's a chance you could end up with her own. And if you were savvy, you would negotiate a settlement in your marriage contract

because you were entitled to a joint which is a payment of one, one third of your husband's estates after his death. It's help you, some of you'd live on. But Bridgeton's got a storyline, Lady Featherington, her husband gambles everything away. And when he dies, she has nothing. What's left goes to her son,

so she relies on him. He cuts her daughter's dowry, so their chance of marriage is pretty much in the dust unless you can negotiate something with him. And when you're a widow, this was the problem. If you'd had a bad husband, You had some independence because you were widowed, but if you didn't have financial independence, what did you do?

You could choose the independence you had as a person on limited means or you could make another marriage, hopefully a good one, and kind of hope for the best. Of course this doesn't mean that there was no fun to be had. Of course there was. And Bridgeton paints a fantastical picture of what some of those scenes might have been like with, well, a hefty dose of artistic licence.

historians look away now. And whilst there were caveats to enjoying a fun and filthy sex life, the risk of STIs was certainly worth bearing in mind. Cephalis, anyone? But what options for contraception did they really have in the Georgian period? What were the preferred methods for safe sex at this time? I caught up with historical condom expert Kate Stevenson to find out how condoms went from an early linen-based bit of kit

to the animal gut kind, which took the Georgian period by storm. At some point, probably in the 1600s, there starts to be the production of animal gut condoms. That sounds, that's an upgrade. Absolutely. So they have a lot of positives. They do have some negatives as well.

I wouldn't expect anything less. Which, of course. But they start to produce something similarly sized, a bit narrower, made of dried animal gut. Still got its little ribbon around the bottom. because of course and the idea is that they're dried out for storage so they can't go off

and then you rehydrate them before use so you would dip them in some water or milk and then you pop it on, tie it round and off you go and rehydrating it makes it a little bit stretchy so you would have them and then you'd have to rehydrate them and then what would you do with them? So you could wash them out, dry them out and reuse them so they were reusable

not forever, but certainly for multiple times. Okay. And they were, it seems pretty widely used. There are a lot of references that particularly grew up in the 18th century of middle class and upper class men using them quite widely. Okay. And of brothels supplying them. That makes sense.

And so they seem to really become quite popular in the 18th century. How would you make some? Well, funny you should mention that. Last week, I had to go. I know you out. I did. I did. So the reason we know how they were made was because there's come the early 1800s,

there's actually some instructions that start to be published. So you can make these at home. Before that, they would be manufactured in workshops. But they start producing recipes. And so we can follow those. And essentially what you do is you take intestines and they can come from a range of sources. Lamb was very traditional, which is where you get lamb skin from.

You can still get lambskin condoms. You can still get lambskin condoms, absolutely. But other animals were used as well. And fish bladders were also used. So apparently they were the worst because they smelled really bad when they were rehydrated. Oh dear. Intestines was much more common.

So you take your intestines and you soak them in an alkaline solution. And that helps to dissolve the fat. And you basically scrub the fat off and then change the alkaline solution and scrub it again. And it's recommended that you do that for sort of over a period of two days. This is quite labour intensive. Oh, it really is. This isn't a quick shag.

No. This is there. They give it a two day running. Absolutely. Well, it takes about a week to make them fully. So, but you can mass produce them. Once you've got a big string of intestines, you can make a lot out of them. So you clean them, you get all of the fat off your them.

You then rinse them. And then traditionally they would be treated with brimstone. like fire and brimstone, so burning sulphur, basically, which is a horrible process and not something I did in my flat. Why were they doing that? So we think it was antimicrobial. We think it actually helped to preserve them longer, essentially the equivalent of a bit of bleach or something like that on them, and a good rinse. So you rinse them, you treat them with brimstone, and then you dry them out. Now, there's a couple of different ways that are drying them out that's recommended. One of them is getting appropriately shaped moulds, pulling them over the moulds and drying them out on those.

And we do know that there was a trade in glass blown penis shapes, essentially, to dry your condoms on. The other way, which is the one I used, is basically to blow up lengths of intestines, clip each end or knot each end and dry them inflated. So the covered under my stairs was wild last week. And then when they're completely dry, they go papery, essentially, because you've got rid of all the fat. And you end up with these sort of dry, papery sheaths. Now, if you've got lots of money, the bit you want is the blind end of the intestines, because that's already got a sealed end.

But if you've got slightly less money, what you're going to get is a knotted end, because then you can use more of the intestines. Okay. And then you go back to your little bit of ribbon, and you have a bit of ribbon around the bottom. So I've got a couple here of different lengths, because we know they were made in different lengths. Oh my goodness.

So this one's slightly longer. and they are, these are folding in half. These are quite narrow ones. You also got them in different widths as well. So they actually feel just a bit like tracing paper or something like that. I cannot believe that you made this. This is, and that's the knotted end. That's the knotted end.

And then here's your ribbon. This is sewn round, but they also, some of them have a channel on and the ribbon is fed round like the linen one. Did you sew this on? That's sewn on, yeah. That is so impressive. So you would have wet there. it would have become more malleable, then you would wriggle it on to an erect willie. Yep. Tie it in place. Tie it in a bow.

Yep. And off you went. A double bow, I would have thought. And you do get stories of them being rehydrated in all sorts of different ways and being used in different ways as well. So to check that they've not got any holes in, you might blow them up first. I've seen images, drawings of that, yeah. Would that have been effective? Well, we haven't run any tests on sort of survival. examples but we do know that modern lamb skin is very effective at preventing pregnancy so it's about the same as modern condoms it's about 98% effective at preventing pregnancy completely useless at preventing

the spread of venereal disease right so essentially it's because it's gut so it's big enough to prevent sperm getting through but it's got lots of little pores in it and viruses and bacteria can get through those I guess that might have actually made the situation worse if people thought they weren't spreading something when they were absolutely And a lot of the men who are writing about it, particularly in their diaries, that is what they're trying to avoid is the spread of disease. And that is why they're wearing it. And it gives them a certain what they think is protection. So they're probably doing it more.

And that's one of the reasons that you actually get physicians and religious figures railing against condom use because they say actually it causes more licentiousness, more sex to happen because people feel safer doing it because there's less risk or supposedly less risk. Where would you have bought these from? Because were there condom shops? Yes, sort of. So you could get these from like chemists and druggists and things like that. You get them from barbers, which again stuck around. Something to the weekend, sir. Exactly, exactly. So something that sort of maintained. But we do know that you could get them direct from the creators. And a lot of those creators, or certainly the ones that we know about, were women.

And so they were running essentially factories, factory production of condoms and selling them wholesale to chemists, but also selling them direct to clients who would come up to where they had the factory and buy them sometimes in bulk if they were going abroad from the source and slightly more cheaply as well. Now, I have heard a rather horrifying thing that you might have been able to buy secondhand condoms. Yes, it appears so. Oh, no. So there's loads of apocryphal stories of this happening and there's not a massive amount of evidence, but that I did have found one absolutely disgusting piece of evidence from the early 18th century from a doctor. And he is basically, he writes a number of treatises, Joseph Cam, on venereal disease and how to prevent it. And one of

his big concerns that he comes back to is reuse of condoms in brothels. And so he talks about how they're being supplied or they're being sold to clients and then they're being taken away afterwards washed out and resold or reused. And he's really concerned about that making the spread of disease much worse because it's not just spreading between sexual partners, it's then spreading through the reuse of the condoms. I mean, wow, as sexy as a show like Bridgeton can make the past seem, there really is nothing like the word secondhand condom to snap you out of that fantasy and bring you back to reality. I don't know about you, but hearing that just made me want to find out more about the underworld of Georgian brothels

because this period had a thriving sex industry. From porn to flagellation houses, who ran the brothels, who profited from this industry? Here's Julie Peekman to shine a light on this underground world. So the Georgians, their reputation for being a pretty racy bunch, a right bunch of goers, did they have porn? They had lots of pornography.

However, at the early part of the period when pornography was developing, at the early part of the 18th century, it was mainly euphemistic erotica. So it wasn't full-blown graphic sex. That started with the Italians, in fact, in the 16th century. And we got lots of pornography coming out, and that was then imported into Britain. By the 17th century, we got French pornography. And of course, the elite gentlemen were buying French pornography that was imported. and it was only by the middle of the 18th century that we actually got our own British homegrown pornography.

I thought like that as head of patriotic porn. Yeah. And John Cleland was obviously responsible for that. Mr Fanny Hill. Yeah. Actually, it was called memoirs of a woman of pleasure and it became commonly known as Fanny Hill. That came out in 1748

and he supposedly wrote it while he was serving time in India. Is that true? Well, according to the biography of John Cleland, yes, he was working in India when he wrote it. And the manuscript came out and some of the secret sex societies got hold of this and read it at their meetings. But then when it was published in 1748, it went from a shared manuscript between friends into something quite a bit more serious because he was then accused of perverting the king's subjects and was arrested. Oh, hello. So he didn't get a good rap for that. No, no, you wouldn't.

You wouldn't. What's the difference between erotica and porn? You've drawing a distinction. Is one a kind of like a trashy titling novel, and the other one is like full penetration? Or how do you draw that distinction? Well, it wasn't just sort of trashy, sexy books, but it was also things like salacious poems that came out,

rival songs that came out, and things like sex manuals. So very often they were classes erotica rather than the graphic novellas that came out, which we classed as proper pornography. Yeah, yeah. Who was publishing this stuff? So John Cleland wrote the kind of the big bonkbuster, Fannie Hill Memoirs of Woman of Pleasure.

Who was publishing this stuff? Who published that? One of the most notorious was Edmund Curl and everybody knew him, but he was also publishing translations, the French translations. One of the earliest was Venus in the cloister, and he was nabbed for that and arrested. They found out what was happening from the Society of the Reformation of Manners. And this was a group of sort of police that were trying to catch people who were doing either naughty things on Sundays or to go into prostitutes or publishing pornography.

So this group, there weren't police in real terms. they were a group of men who actually just got together to try and catch people. But Edmund Curl was so popular with the, as he would be, with the public, that when he was arrested and he was sent to the pillory, the crowd got him out of the pillory and carried him aloft and to the public cheers. Because he's printed porn. Because they liked what he was doing. You will not put our porn baron in the pillory.

I love that. But there was also female publishers of pornography, which not a lot many people talk about. There was a woman called Mary Cooper who took over her husband's publishing company and that was usually how women came to run publishing companies because you know how repressed women were at the time and subjugated. But she managed to take over his company

and started publishing boardy poems and slight pornography. Wow. And there's also a woman called Bridget Lynch that was actually, Wittfinder in the trial records because she got caught for publishing naughty images. Bridgetts. Was there porn bookshops, or would it be like that you had to go into

like the 18th century equivalent of the Waterstones and kind of give it like a wink, wink, nudge, something for the weekend, sir? It was a bit more public than that, actually. One of the newspapers complained that on the strand, there was a bookshop that had a naked cardboard cutout as an indicator that you could actually go in there and buy pornography. It's not hushed up, is it?

But it was rather a point of. towards the police, unfortunately. That wasn't sort of the best advertising method. Very often they'd sell them from the back of backdoor of taverns like this and coffee shops under the counter. We often think about it's the men consuming the porn, but do you have any evidence that women were reading pornography? Yes, there was an Irish brothel keeper called Peg Plunkett

and she received the guide of joy from her friend as a birthday present. And she also gave Fanny Hill as a present to her friend. So there were certainly sex workers were reading it. And it would have been available in brothels anyway. But we also know that Eliza Haywood, who wrote racing novels herself, like love in excess with heaving breasts and snowy white arms. But she has left a receipt in the William Andrews Clark Library, which indicates that she was paid two and six for translating French pornography.

But there's no reason why we can't assume that women were reading pornography. Come on, you know, I mean, we would be, wouldn't we? If we were having affairs with men who got it, you'd be reading it. Oh, God, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Was there any kind of sense that the French stuff was posher than the British pod? I don't know about posh, but it was ruder. And they knew it was naughty because anything in French,

everybody knew that it was going to be ruder than anything that we had in the early 18th century. So there was particular books like Don Borg and Therese Philosoph, and that had lots of flagellation in it. So what we get in is the understanding now of the British writers of pornography, how should they write their own pornography? And they did that by incorporating flagellation. They did love a bit of slap and tickle, didn't they? Definitely. That comes up all of time. Well, it definitely comes up first in graphic pornography in Fanny Hill, because she does.

she's supposed to flagelate one of her clients. Yes, she's quite happy doing that, but she doesn't want to be flagellated herself. Yes. But in the 1770s, what's really interesting is that there was this whole flurry of flagellation material that came out, and this was real pornography. And it seems there's like an obsession with governesses and stepmothers,

and the setting was in nurseries or in school places. And it was sort of titillating material, but it was all to do with what sort of whip should you have. Should you have a hard birch whip or should you have a cat of nine tails? And so there's a real obsession about what equipment to use and what you should be wearing and who you should be doing it with. I'll be back after this short break. How did you think that was? I've heard it suggested that the English in particular were obsessed with flagellation and it came from boarding schools but I don't know if there's anything in that at all.

I think there was just flogging everywhere. It was just their thing. It was if you see it in the household, maids were being, beaten. There was whipping was part of the punishment for prostitution. So women were getting whipped publicly right up until the end of the 18th century as a punishment for sex work. I find it quite surprised about sex in the Georgian period is it's actually, it seems to be quite out in the open. I was expecting to be much more hushed up and shut away, but there seems to be quite an open attitude to this. But there were secret societies. There weren't there?

because it couldn't all be open and everyone having a rollicking time. Tell me about some of the more hidden sexual subcultures. One of the main ones was the Molly Houses, and these were establishments where homosexual men could go to meet and have sex. One of the main Molly houses we know about was Mother Claps Molly House, and we know about her because she came to trial. Again, the Reformation, the Society for the Reformation of Manners was the problematic spy.

and they more or less tricked people. They'd got witnesses to inveigle into the molly houses to find out what was going on. And the mollies themselves used to have regular meetings. Mother Clapp had said, and she quite enjoyed them. She enjoyed the whole experience, and she used to give them drinks and serve them food. And then they'd have little mock ceremonies

of either wedding ceremonies or birthing ceremonies where they gave birth to wooden dolls. So it was all this sort of like mock satirical attitude towards the normal marriage and normal sex life. So was a Molly house? So if a Molly is a slang for an effeminate man, a Molly house, is it a brothel? Is it a pub?

Is it a club? What is it? It's a meeting place for homosexuals to go and have sex, but at the same time, have a drink together and bond. There were people selling sex out of the Molly houses. I mean, if you're going to, if you're a hustler, if you're a man and your clients are other men, men, that's a good place to pick up business, right? Indeed. And there was established men might go there

to pick up a bit of rough trade. So there was certainly sales there and money was changing hands. Wow. So Mother Clapps Molly House is the most well known. But were there others? Do you have any kind of a sense of how common they were or how many there were? There was flagellation societies. Wow. Okay. The one that we know about is a female flagellation society that. operated from German Street in London. We know about this from Ned Ward, who was a journalist who used to go around London, talking to people and finding out tidbits of sex and naughty things to write in his journal, in his newspaper. So we know about female flagellants, and he reckoned that they were elite women. Why they would want to go into this, we don't know. He doesn't go into anything in detail about it, but we know they existed. The other sort of societies, secret sex societies, mainly all-male.

Is there any, because I'm fascinated by the history of the Mollie Houses and who they were and what was happening there, was there a female equivalent? Were there lesbian Mollie Houses, or they wouldn't have called Mollie Houses? Or is there any evidence? What were lesbians doing in the 18th century? Well, most of the women that I've written about were actually lesbians who went and had sex within their own homes. And it was easy to do that because there was female friendships.

And you just used to share beds anyway. And that was an acceptable thing to do with your friends. And women, of course, were much less important. There was no threat to the status quo like there was with male homosexuality. So it mattered less to men that there was lesbians. But women did enjoy having sex together and they had relationships together. But they're mainly set up house together like Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby. the ladies of Langolan.

And they had loving relationships. And there's also, of course, people like Anne Lister, much well known now, who tended to like dressing as men and had her own coterie of girls around her. So the thing about the my houses, is they're often quite poor areas, which suggest that a lot of their clientele

would have been more of the working class, kind of your everyday Joe. What about if you were minted? It's got to be a different story. If you've got Kaching-King, what was a super-riched sex club like. And of course you could keep it secret. Pay them off. Yeah, pay anybody off.

The most notorious one was Sir Francis Dashwood's club. And he formed the Knights of St Francis. And it was probably after a meeting at the Beef State Club because he just had a fad about creating lots and lots of different societies. He formed the divan club for people who've been to Turkey. He formed the De La Tanti Club for people who'd been to Italy. This was all his friends. and he formed the beef steak club, which was for people who like beef steak. Why, he really like making clubs. He liked making clubs. So it was at the beef steak and probably his friends there,

and from that he merged the club that he would eventually call the monks of Medanamhan. And this was when he bought a Cistercian Abbey, which was about six miles away from his landed estate. A proper abbey, like a proper way. It was a ruined and dilapidated Abbey. He's gone all in there. He has, and it must have cost him quite a bit. But he was, like you say, he was minted, he had lots of money.

But he obviously didn't want it all on his estate where his wife was. Oh, no. So he bought this Abbey and he refurbished it. And that's where they had their meetings. And very often they'd meet maybe twice a year. They'd get people like Charlotte Hayes, the brothel keeper in Covent Garden, to come down and bring all her nymphs, as she'd call them. And so they'd have prostitutes there.

And they'd either go off into their separate cells or supposedly he had orgies, but that's a rumour that obviously we can't really confirm. But definitely they had lots of women down there for sex. Covent Garden in London really was the place to be if you were looking for mischief. But imagine you had arrived there in the 18th century. With this carnival of erotica all around you, how would you even know where to begin? Luckily, in 1788, Harris's list of Covent Garden Ladies was published,

an actual catalogue of the finest sex workers of the day. I spoke to Katie Wignall to find out more about this incredible resource. Katie, thank you so much for talking to me about this absolutely fascinating historical document, Harris's list. But before we get into who was on it and what it has to say about them, who was Harris? Was he even a real person? So Harris was a real person. goes by the name of Jack Harris, but also appears as John Harrison.

I think the latter was more respectable. And Jack Harris was part of Covent Garden Society. He was right in there. He was actually the head waiter at one of the busiest, most notorious coffee houses, the Shakespeare's head. So because of that, he knew everything that was going on. And a bit like a concierge, you know, he was a fixer. he could sort out and knew absolutely everyone.

Now, what's really interesting is that we don't think he actually wrote the list. He had the information, but the list was actually written kind of like a ghost writer by a man born in Dublin called Samuel Derek. And he'd come to London in about the 1750s. And he was looking for a way to, I think he wanted to be a poet, actually. but whatever the arrangement was and we don't know for sure how it worked he ends up being the writer

so he uses Jack Harris's name and cachet but he's the one doing all the work kind of like when you find out that pop stars aren't actually singing their own songs they've got someone else singing it and they're just a pretty face of it exactly I know it scandalous but what's interesting is

it probably only succeeded because Jack Harris had that authority. You know, his name, he was the person that everyone went to, that knew all the freshest faces within the sex trade and the industry, and he knew all the characters in Covent Garden. All right, so the list itself is basically an armanac of London sex workers, where they live, what they do, what the descriptions of that are, and we'll get into that.

But if you were a sex worker in Old London Town in Covent Garden, and you wanted to get on this list and presumably this would be quite good for business to be on this list. What was the process for that? How would you, would he, is it like Mitchell and Stars? It's just anonymously reviewed? So, yeah, they're sort of trip advisor a little bit today.

So it's quite hard actually to piece together how it worked. We do have a bit of an insight from a memoir, probably not written by Fannie Murray, who was a famous courtesan, but in a memoir, supposedly by her she talks about going to Harris having to pay 20 pounds being medically examined and kind of having a written assurance and then she could be included in the list whether that was the same that everyone i'm not quite sure so this is that a proper business

isn't it this isn't like because the persona that he portrays is this kind of jolly scamp round town like sampling all the delights of covent garden but this is if you have to like audition and pay to be on that list, this is a business. Absolutely. And I think some of the most savvy sex workers knew that. And if they'd had some time not being in the list because it ends up being this annual thing that's updated and published, you know, if they've had some time back, maybe they're being kept as a mistress. If they want to launch themselves back on the scene, a perfect way to do that is to appear in the next annual of Harris's lists because it announces they're now kind of available, I suppose.

That makes perfect sense. The list is jam-packed full of really colourful and flamboyant characters and descriptions. Which among them stand out to you? It's a weird question, but do you have any favourites? Well, yes, I do have some favourites. And I think sometimes when you first read them, items are objectively funny. And you always have to remember, I think, these are women that you're talking about, but part of the allure of Harris's list

is that it's written in this witty and intentionally entertaining way. And Samuel Derek, my goodness, loves dragging out a metaphor. So we have Miss Charlotte Collins, who can be found on Oxford Street. And she grew up as a dairy maid in Staffordshire and took her from milking the cow and taught her to stroke the bull. Oh, Charlotte. I mean, we've got to take it all with a pinch of salt because it's fantasy and they're ultimately, they're selling a fantasy here.

But it does give us very valuable insights into sex work in 18th century Covent Garden, including things like, were there any sex workers of colour that were working at the time? Yeah, absolutely. And Harris, in this particular edition, which I think is the 1777, it does mention a woman from the West Indies. and they use, I mean, the Georgian term at the time but mulatto, and that would imply that somebody was black or mixed race. And it's really interesting

because we know from visual evidence as well, if you look at Hogarth's paintings, engravings, of course. Black people were there in Georgian, London. Not mentioned in the list, but somebody who was quite sort of famous in her time was known as Torney Betty. and Tornie Betty was a waitress, a very pretty lorded for her appearance and very charming woman, and she worked at Mole King's Coffee House, which was right on the piazza, and she was celebrated as this part of the scene of Common Garden. And she's even depicted in a print, which is held in the British Museum,

a kind of satirical print, but still she is there. We have an image of her. Maybe it's, you know, not to get an exact likeness, but it's amazing to have a visual record of her. Of who she was? One of the most famous black sex workers as well was known as Black Harriet. She'd arrived in London in about 1766, was under, I mean, unfortunately, she was enslaved.

She was effectively owned by a ship's captain and an English plantation owner. And then the thing is, he dies. And so she ends up being saddled with his debts. You know, creditors come out. I know, totally unfair. So how does that work? It's frankly outrageous. So she ends up going in debtors prison.

But actually, because of his network and because she has friends, she is able to get out of the debtor's prison. And for a while, she runs a successful brothel on King's Place. So she is able to operate as a businesswoman. Unfortunately, you know, it's an incredibly fickle industry. she is unable to keep the business going and then ends back up in the debtors prison. And it shows you just really the tumultuous industry

that people were in. You could sometimes be on the up and making loads of money, but there was no safety net. You can't make any mistakes with this. This is not a friend to women, this text. It is a fantastic marketing tool. I'm sure that it helped build a number of careers,

but this is a text for men primarily. However, it doesn't mean we can't learn from it. One of the things that I find really interesting in it is it gives the age, as well as the address, it gives the age. What kind of ages are we talking about here when these people would be doing this kind of work in Carvent Garden? Because that's one of the things that can make you go, oh, for the court. Yeah, and I think that is true. I think from most of which I've read, it says sort of two and 20,

but then often when it says, oh, she's two and 20, and she's been in the game a few years from some of the stories of more the famous court stands, certainly you know that they've been kept as mistresses from the age of 14. You know, still at that time, I think the age of consent was 12 until it was raised to 13 and around the 1880s and then to 16 later. So, yeah, there is a lot of uncomfortable. Not nice. Not nice.

And the real push, you know, the real prize of virginity. They're obsessed with that, weren't they? Absolutely obsessed. And, you know, they wouldn't probably even appear in Harris's list as virgins. That would be the biggest commodity in the sex industry, which is fairly sickening. I think I remember reading in the memoir of Charlotte Hayes, the brothel owner. And I might be paraphrasing here that she said, a virginity is as easy to make as a pudding.

Yeah, there were definitely some tricks of the trade in order to fool men into thinking they had got this prize, which is, again, a bit gross, but sort of the virginity could be sold for as many times as you could get away with it, basically. Yeah, sold over and over and over. What happened to Jack Harris and Derek the ghostwriter? Do we know? So Jack Harris ends up dying actually just before he doesn't know this, but he dies the year before the last ever Harris's list. And in a nice kind of coming full circle, Jack Harris ends up doing his own spell in a debtor's prison, but then comes out after a few years and ends up buying another of the coffee houses in Covent Garden. So he seems to do all right for himself. With Samuel Derrick, it's really interesting actually because he, seems to go from strength to strength, even though people don't know that he's the writer.

He goes back to Ireland in 1760 and he's able to sort of cultivate this air of respectability, seems to make some friends along the way. And when he comes back in 1761, he has made the master of ceremonies in Bath. He dies a few years later. Now, when he dies, he kind of drops a bombshell because he says, actually, I,

I was the writer. So it's when he dies that the secret has kind of revealed deathbed confession. And he is, you know, reclaimed as the writer of Harris's list. Now, the list itself sort of limps on and the last published Harris's list is 1795. And by that time, like all things that are really popular, they try to go a bit too mass market. It loses those niche in jokes, the references. to the real characters of Covent Garden. There are raids on the publishers, on the coffee houses,

and the publishers by this point, Jay Roach, they're actually in prison. They had to have a fine for printing such sordid materials. So in the end, you've got to think that it's just not worth it for them to be publishing the list. Wow. But thank God that they did, right? I mean, as prejudiced and biased and sexist as the thing is,

if it wasn't here, we wouldn't know anything about these women. No, it gives you a glimpse. It gives you a glimpse. And it gives you an insight into the range of women and how sort of endemic, you know, the sex trade was, how it sort of went into all factors of life. And it was inescapable, really. Thank you to Katie.

And thank you to all of the guests who featured on this first episode in our real Bridgeton special mini-series. We've got upcoming episodes on Georgian royalty and celebrity, Georgian drugs and alcohol. And to cap it all off, We'll have a reaction to season three of Bridgeton. We'll find out how historically accurate those new episodes really are.

And as always, if you want us to explore a subject or maybe if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith, the senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit.

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