[A Small Note: I am not quite sure where I stand vis-a-vis this site. I operate in the smallest of niches, but I gather that as they have done throughout the internet, the Nazis have established themselves, claiming, as is ever the way, ‘freedom of speech’. I detest the far-right who, as they have ever done, are exploiting liberalism’s weaknesses to promote their own entryism. My own take is ‘do unto others….’ But I lack the courage and more important, the rack, the red-hot pincers and the Iron Maiden.
Yet I had determined to quit, and silence has indeed fallen. But, inspired by the social historian Ms E— B—, who posts a regular flow of (usually aristocratic) 18th century beauties on Bluesky, and who came today to the great Sally Salisbury, top courtesan of her era, I permitted myelf a brief return. I go, as ever, a leetle down-market and offer another of the sisterhood: Jane Davies. She has not, unlike La Salisbury, made it to Wikipedia. Their loss. Nor, sadly, do there seem to be any extant portraits, The original text appeared in my study of women and slang: Sounds & Furies, née Bitching (2019).]
After the 17th century’s taste for erotic dialogues, generally conducted by pedalogical whores and their still unversed companions, the 18th and early 19th turned to the profession’s memoirs. John Cleland’s heroine ‘Fanny Hill’, whose supposed Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure appeared in 1749, may have been a fictional figure but the subjects of these supposed ‘autobiographies’ were not. The best-known madames of an earlier age, such as Damaris Page ‘the great bawd of the seamen’ who had flourished c. 1650 in London’s dockland red-light district Ratcliff Highway, achieved no more than an occasional walk-on as regarded print (for instance Page and the equally well-known Priss Fotheringham’s joint appearance in a pamphlet of 1660: Strange and true Conference between Two Notorious Bawds, During their Imprisonment and lying together in Newgate...’ supposedly authored by ‘Megg. Spencer’, a well-known bawd herself and self-appointed ‘Over-seer of the Whores and Hectors [i.e. pimps] on the Bank-Side.’). Her successors are recorded, quite literally, in chapter and verse.
Among those name-checked were ‘Mrs Elizabeth Wisebourn’ (published in 1721) (i.e. the madame ‘Mother’ Wisebourn, coincidentally Sally Salisbury’s first off-street employer at her luxury bagnio in Covent Garden), ‘the celebrated Miss Fanny M’ (1759) which included the rules of the Whores Club (‘1. Every member of this society must have been debauched before she was fifteen’) and ‘Miss Kitty F[ishe]r (1759), whose ‘uncommon adventures’ were also recorded as ‘Horse and away to St James’ Park’ (1760). As for ‘the celebrated Mrs. Sally Salisbury’, her ‘effigies, parentage, education, life, merry-pranks and conversation’ were first offered in 1722-3 (she died in Newgate prison a year later), and followed by a number of similar works.
The list also includes ‘Genuine memoirs of the celebrated Miss Nancy D[awso]n’ (1760) whose book of ‘jests’ (Nancy was perhaps paid to lend her celebrated name) was a popular best-seller. Nancy was as much dancer as whore, taking a role in 1759 revival of John Gay’s 1728 hit The Beggar’s Opera. Here she performed her speciality: the hornpipe (the punning potential of which may possibly have been observed). She died in 1756, leaving a variety of dances, sailor songs and this nursery rhyme as her memorial:
Nancy Dawson was so fine
She wouldn’t get up to serve the swine;
She lies in bed till eight or nine,
So it’s Oh, poor Nancy Dawson.
As well as non-specific round-ups of the foremost ladies of the town, such as Characters of the present most celebrated courtezans (1780) there were also such leering collections as The prostitutes of quality; or adultery â-la-mode. Being authentic and genuine memoirs of several persons of the highest quality (1757). The lip-smacking allure of posh totty is nothing new.
Other memoirs included The women of the town, or Authentick memoirs of Phoebe Philips (1801), The Secret memoirs of Miss Sally Dawson (1805), A curious and interesting narrative of Poll House and the Marquis of C***** (1820), Memoirs of the celebrated Lady C*****m (1820), Memoirs of the life of the celebrated Mrs Q------ (1822). A trio of early 19th century ladies – Margaret Leeson (1797), Harriette Wilson (1825) and Julia Johnstone (1825) – were keen to add in all their titles that the work had been ‘written by herself’. Unfortunately, even were this truly the case (and it would appear to have been so in that of Margaret Leeson) the ladies were at pains to present a respectable image, at least in their vocabulary. No slang here.
Perhaps the best equipped for our purposes [i.e. slang spoken among prostitutes] was Jane Davies, the ‘genuine memoirs’ of whom, now feted as ‘the late celebrated’, appeared in 1761. Jane came from Edinburgh, where she had joined the game as a teenager. There she had been clapped, then cured and was ‘allow’d [i.e. acknowledged] to be the heartiest girl in town.’ This seems to have arisen from the fact that she ‘surpassed all her sister whores in swearing and obscene talk’. As a later comment puts it, she possessed ‘a peculiar turn to that species of eloquence, which though not treated ...by Quintilian or Longinus [both Roman rhetoricians], is generally understood in the metropolis, and goes by the name of Billings-gate.’
She could also drink any man beneath the table, pausing only to empty his pockets of such money as remained before marching off. A later trip to Ireland, to recruit new girls after she had become a Covent Garden madam, showcased both her talents. The ship ran into a storm and while weaker folk might wail and/or vomit, not Jane: ‘She drank flip [beer, spirits and sugar mixed and heated], and cursed as loudly as any sailor of them all.’
Ms Davies made no pretence to sisterhood. While she had to acknowledge the need to regard men – her paying customers – as deserving of at least counterfeit politeness, her dealings with women, be they the brothel’s inmates or the maids who cleaned after them, were antagonistic and her term of choice was bitch. ‘She scarce ever spoke to [maids] without using the appellation of ragg-doll b—h, or some other epithet equally indelicate.’ Unsurprisingly few maids stayed much beyond a week. Her house was known for its foreign girls – she made regular recruiting trips to France and established a pan-European network of bawds, trading girls between them (such travellers often miraculously regaining their maidenhead as they stepped off the boat). This did not spare a particular girl’s French maid who, perhaps somewhat homesick, entered the brothel kitchen and started preparing potage, no doubt to some rich old provincial receipe learned at the maternal knee.
‘Old Jenny [Davies] who had a good nose soon smelt the stink of leeks, and called out, G—d d—n me, who is that poisoning my house below. Answer being given her That it was only M—le’s maid making a little soupe. D—n the French b—h cried Jane, I’ll give her a bellyful of soupe by and by. So Jane having provided herself with a close stool pan [a chamberpot] which was full, ran to her, and throwing it full in her face, cried, Here you French b—h, here’s soupe enough for you, you shall never wanted for soupe...I’ll season it for you you b—h, G—d d—n ye.
The memoir runs from one lurid anecdote to another. Another tale concerns a brother and sister (again French) who, wholly ignorant of their true relationship, she had as she believed introduced to each other (pimping out the girl to her sibling). Despite a plot which might seem to be leading to farce if not actual incest, Ms Davies would be for once the victim. The pair robbed her, and left, after poisoning her supper. Her response was predictable:
G—d eternally d—n all the French b — ches! may their own country disease, the p—x, rot them to the bone! May they be all covered over with ulcers, their noses drop off, and may they all die upon a dunghill and the devil run away with their souls! Amen.
There followed ‘a good deal more, in the same stile and tone’. At which she fainted and was ‘quite unfit for business that day.’
She was 74 at her death, a respectable sum of years. The compiler of her memoirs concluded thus: ‘Old Jane had a particular talent for smart sayings, though there generall enter’d a good deal of that sort of humour into them, which is common among fish-women and upon the Thames. A Person who was intimately acquainted with her made a collection of her bons mots and […] we shall publish it entire.’
Sadly, this embryonic clickbait was unfulfilled. The small print, as it were, made it clear that such a ‘best of...’ compilation would only appear were the memoirs a hit. We must assume, in the compilation’s absence, that this was not the case.