Billingsgate. As in fish. As in Belin’s Gate which may memorialize one Belin, who, according to Charles Dickens Jr’s Dictionary of the Thames (1881) and quoting Geoffrey of Monmouth, was a king and built the first water gate on the site around 400 CE. The gate and an original quay once existed, as perhaps did a southern section of the city wall erected to hold back the river; both have long vanished in the unequal battle of stolid land and energetic water. Belin, however, may have been less grand, and merely the owner of the riverine acreage.
Fish were one of the cargos landed there from the 13th century and earlier (it is mentioned in the laws of Ethelred), but the piscine link only became formal in 1699 when a statute declared the site as the city’s single fish market; after that it’s all open sheds and bummarees (etymology sadly unknown) bargaining over freshly unloaded catch until the Victorians as was their way required something more splendid. That appeared mid-19th century – the building is still there: a mix of offices and party space – and lasted till 1982 when the market packed up and relocated at Poplar.
Fish meant sailors but also fish wives, sometimes known as fish fags (defined by Hotten in 1873 as a generic for ‘any scolding, vixenish foul-mouthed woman’; the fag perhaps an abbreviation of faggot, an unflattering synonym for ‘woman’), and generally identified with language as foul as the guts or puddings they ripped from their ichthyoid stock in trade.[1] The three-dimensional form of the old term ‘cry stinking fish’. The fishwife was often bracketed with her sister-in-trade, the oyster-woman, another whose tongue was considered over-ripe. The eponymy of the place name and the alleged foulness of the language used by those who worked there is first recorded in 1676 and flourished as a stereotype for three centuries. The fish fag’s vocabulary could sometimes be loaned to men – such as he who in 1851 displayed a ‘coarseness of language [that] emphatically betrays him as obscene slang does the fishfag’ but actual evidence was still withheld.
It is also possible – consciously or otherwise – that the link of foul language and its female users reflects another of slang’s adoptions of fish: as an image – misogynistic as ever – of the vagina (e.g. bit of skate, bearded clam, old ling, oyster, cock – as in coquille, a cockleshell – and of course fish itself). The 17th century poet Wycherley termed oysters a ‘juicy, salt commodity’ in his poem ‘To a Pretty Young Woman, who opening Oisters said, She wou’d open for Her, and me too; since ’twas for her Pleasure’. The poem is filled with sexual imagery and slang: juicy,sexy, salt, randy (of a woman), commodity, old ling and oyster itself, all the vagina. The poet also names ‘Venus, that Fish-Wife’ and begs ‘Open your Legs, not Shells for me.’
If one cannot gender slang then occasionally one can do so for its specifics. As ‘bad’ language created by an identifiable occupation, ‘Billingsgate’, product of London’s fish-wives, can be seen as the female predecessor of ‘bullocky’, the notoriously lurid outpourings of Australia’s male bullock-drivers. And if the latter tended to be aimed at the unfortunate draft-animals, especially when stuck in some clinging bog, rather than a fellow man, then Billingsgate was stereotyped as targeting other women.
As ‘The Husband’s speech to one of his Neighbours, out of his wives hearing’ in the Juniper Lectures explained:
It is a schoole where shame-fac’d women may
Heare impudence anatomiz’d so right,
That she, who scarce i’ the morn knows what to say
May learne the Art of scolding all by night
They jeere, they fight, they swear, & curse like Roisters,
I’de ne’er abide the place, were’t not for Oysters[2]
Certainly the cartoonists’ take was almost invariably woman-to-woman. There are illustrations by such as Rowlandson and Cruikshank: Fishwife A, large of breast, solid of buttock, arms akimbo, mouth agape, assails Fishwife B, similarly accoutred, though perhaps in contrasting colours. But Billingsgate is rarely detailed, any more than bullocky. The caption may offer suggestions but they are en-blanked and on occasion the fishwives are neither female nor engaged with fish but such contemporary politicians as Pitt or Fox en travesti and the connoisseur of eponymy has nothing to latch onto.
Yet try to trace some authentic Billingsgate and where is it? The references are too frequent to deny the link but it is hard to go beyond. Fortunately one of the city’s great chroniclers, Ned Ward, did pay a visit to the market in its linguistic prime, and recorded it in his London Spy (1703). After making their way down
‘a narrow Lane, as dark as a Burying Vault, which Stunk of stale Sprats, Piss, and Sirreverence [...] We e’en turn’d our selves into the Smoaky Boozing Ken [...] where round the Fire sat a tatter’d Assembly of Fat Motherly Flat-caps, with their Fish-Baskets hanging upon their Heads instead of Riding-hoods, with every one her Nipperkin of warm Ale and Brandy; and as many Rings upon their Thumbs as belongs to a suit of Bed-Curtains. Everyone as Slender in the Waste as a Dutch Skipper in the Buttocks; and look’d together, like a Litter of Squab Elephants. Their Noses were as sharp as the Gnomon of a Dial, and look’d as Blew as if they had been Frost-nip’d. Their Cheeks were as plump as an Infants Buttocks, but adorn’d with as many Crimson Carnossities as the Face of a Noblemans Butler, who has liv’d Forty Years in a Family; and plainly proved by the depth of their colour, That Brandy is a Nobler Die than Claret. Their Tongues were as loud as the Temple-Horn, that calls the Cuckold-makers to their Commons: And every word they spoke was at least in the Pitch of double Gammut. [38]
Then one looking over her Shoulder, and spying me behind her, accosts me after this manner; God save you, honest Master, will you Pledge me? Ay, Dame, said I, with all my Heart. Why then, says she, here’s a Health to mine A—s, and a Fart for those that owe no Money.
Lord help my poor Masters, says another, they look as if they had disoblige’d their Wives or their Landladies, and they would not rise, and let them in to Night. [40]
Ward’s companion pulls him away: ‘Let’s seek another Apartment: These saucy Tongu’d old Whores will tease us to Death.’ Bad move. ‘Which unhappy words one of them over-heard; and starting up like a Fury, thus gave her Lungs a Breathing.’
You White-liver’d Son of a Fleet-street Bumsitter [prostitute], begot upon a [sedan] Chair at Noonday, between Ludgate and Temple-Bar. You Puppily off-Spring of a Mangy Nightwalker, who was forc’d to Play the Whore an Hour before she cry’d out [i.e. in childbirth], to pay the Bawd her Midwife, for bringing you, you Bastard, into the World. Who is it that you call Whore?
This time they do leave, ‘thankful to Providence we escap’d so imminent a Danger, as if deliver’d from the Rage of so many Wild-Cats. And indeed if their Tallons were as sharp as their Tongues, they need not fear a Combat with all the Beasts of America.’
Nonetheless, he returns, and encounters
a Crowd of Thumb-Ring’d Flat-caps, from the Age of Seven to Seventy, who sat Snarling and Grunting at one another, over their Sprats and Whitings, like a pack of Domestick Dogs over the Cook-maids kindness, or a parcel of hungry Sows at a Trough of Hogwash; every one looking as sharp as a stroling Fortune-teller; that I fear’d they would have pickt my Pocket with their Eyes, or have brought me under an ill-Tongue before I could have shot this dangerous Gulph, where the Angry Surges of a Tempestuous Tittle Tattle run Mountain high, dashing into my Ears on every side, that I was as glad when I had weather’d this Storm of Verbosity, as an Insolvent Creditor who has slip’d the Villanous gripes of a gang of Protection-Cursers.[3]
Nothing lasts and by 1914, a smug report could claim that OLD BILLINGSGATE VERNACULAR LOST. LONDON’S FISH MARKET HAS MENDED ITS MANNERS and stated that ‘”Aw, git orf, carn’t yer,” [is] the most outrageous extent to which one “lady” will venture with another.’ Cocks on this particular dunghill, the evangelicals: ‘Our Sunday schools, Bands of Hope, temperance meetings, and home visits have done an everlasting amount of good among the people here. It is only the loafers who are responsible for keeping up the bad name of the neighbourhood.’
No matter. Eponymy had transcended geography early on. The play King Leir (c.1590 and still unattributed though the cant pamphleteer Robert Greene is one of its possible authors) condemns ‘as bad a tongue ... as any Oysterwife at Billinsgate hath’.[4] A century on and readers were tempted by a book that, among other contents, promised (but sadly failed to deliver) ‘Billingsgate Raileries’. Jon Bee, in his 1821 rip-off of Egan’s Life in London, took his Corinthians Bob Tally-ho and Tom Dashall there. An earlier ballad, ‘The Bloody Battle at Billingsgate, Beginning with a Scolding bout between two young Fish-women, Doll and Kate’, promises much but is conducted in standard English, with a few trulls and punks thrown in for good measure. There is some tearing of both gowns and hair but in the end all is love and peace, washed down with two quarts of hot ale and brandy. In 1825 Charles Westmacott, another of those who sought inspiration in Egan’s best-seller, took his English Spy to the fish-market, but only for a slumming grande dame to mock the stall-holders by suggesting that their stock was not ‘sweet’.[5] A ‘volley of abuse fiery and appalling as the lava of a volcano followed,’ concluding, ‘Not sweet, you — ,’ said the offended deity; ‘how can I answer for its sweetness, when you have been tickling his gills with your stinking paws?’ Teasing the fish-fags was once perhaps a regular form of class warfare, akin to young rakes tipping over the boxes in which stood early-19th century watchmen or ‘charlies’. According to Boswell, Johnson, on a bet, volunteered to reduce a fishwife to fury simply by using terms of which she was ignorant. He called her a succession of parts of speech – an ‘article,’ a ‘noun,’ a ‘pronoun’ and so on. The bet was duly won and the unfortunate woman threw herself into the market mud, unable to respond to terms she failed to understand, railing dejectedly against this unfair ‘blackguarding.’ Not that the fish-fags always lost. In 1747 no. 139 in the 9th edition of Joe Miller’s Jests offers this encounter:
‘A Gentlewoman who thought her Servants always cheated her when they went to Billingsgate to buy Fish, was resolved to go thither one Day herself. Arriving at the stall, and considered the produce over-priced, she offered half its price. Lord, Madam, said the Woman, I must have stole it to sell it at that Price, but you shall have it if you tell me what you do to make your Hands look so white. Nothing, good Woman, answer’d the Gentlewoman, but wear Dog Skin Gloves. D—n you for a lying B—ch, reply’d the other, my husband has worn Dog-Skin Breeches these ten Years, and his A—se is as brown as a Nutmeg.’
The term remains but seems wholly defanged. In 1933 the film Britannia of Billingsgate (based on a recent play) would be summed up by the BFI as ‘this effervescent musical comedy that jaunts between the cloth caps of Billingsgate Fish Market and the top hats and heady glamour of the film world. Things have never looked so good for Billingsgate chippy owner Bessie Bolton (Violet Loraine) after she is presented with the opportunity of becoming the singing sensation of the silver screen - Shepherd's Bush style.’ ‘Flat-caps’, once slang for ‘citizens’, may have made the trip, ‘Billingsgate’ raileries did not.
And were the raileries, or such as we can find, that exceptional? Is there a lost parcel of women-only coinages that rivalled the well-documented ‘male’ obscenities in their gross and gendered excess? We lack proof but perhaps in the end the whole notoriety of ‘Billingsgate’ was no more than a male’s reaction to the simple idea of women’s unrestrained effing and blinding, a supposed shock that reminds one of Johnson’s affected surprise at the possibility of a female preacher. The form, rather than any special content, caused the ruckus.
If Billingsgate refuses to yield up chapter and verse, we must make do with confection. The idea of women cursing women amused pamphleteers. Named authors are rare, but the speakers, at least, were more than usually female.
Here, as an example, is An account of a great & famous scoldling-match [sic] between four remarkable scolding fish-women of Rosemary-lane, and the like number of basket-women of Golden-lane, near Cripplegate, on Monday last, upon a wager for five guinea's, published in 1699. This ‘Tryal of their Skill at the Tongue-Tallent-Art’ brings back the women of Rosemary Lane1, whose skills readers had already enjoyed in The New Brawle, or Turnmill-street against Rosemary Lane of 1654. This time the harridans’ face-off is with their sisters of Golden Lane, now part of the Barbican development and then (as now) one street down from the sordid indulgences of Whitecross Street, and like its neighbour a place where, as a ballad promised, ‘do strapping lasses dwell.’
For the Rosemary-lane ‘Disputants, alias, Scolders’: Widow Webb, Nell Chadd, Dorothy Evans and Joan Boss; in the Golden-lane corner, Bess Pierce, Ann Williams, Barbary[1] [sic] Adams and Sarah Wyatt. The lack of the usual lubricious, pointed pseudonyms suggests that these may even have been real women, though whether the contest was too cannot be proved.
Golden-lane Bess goes first: calls her team ‘disputants’ but their rivals simply ‘Noisemakers’. She’s proud of her side, and ‘ready to engage with the most obstinate Mother Damnable [a real-life brothel-keeper] that Rosemary-Lane ever yet Spawn’d’. And we’re off, Widow Webb comes back hard: ‘An excellent rare Speech indeed; I believe you think you are as Cock-sure of the Five Guinea’s as you was held up against the Butt of Beer by Mr. R-l-s tapster’. Nor was that encounter – 2/6 the proposed fee – very profitable though ‘if all be true as was reported, he made you amends afterwards by making you a fine present with a French Alamode — You know my meaning, Bess, I am sure.’ And so do we: that ‘French’ gift may be common rather than fashionable, and it is not the oral sex variety.
Bess is fired up now. ‘Aye...Mrs Spit-Venom, I won’t give my A—s for a thousand such Tatterdemallions as you; ’Faith, better to have a Butt of Beer at my Back [...] than to be laid on a heap of Dung on Tower-Hill with a Pocky Tom Turd-man [cess-pit cleaner] a playing on my Dulcimer; and for my Reward have a damnable Kick on the britch for being sluggish and inactive. [...] Out upon you, you fulsom Punk you; your Breath stinks worse than the rank Piss of a hunted Bitch-Fox. For the poor fellow (whom I much pitty) affirm’d in my hearing [...] that had he not just before been emptying of a House of Office [a privy], you had certainly strangled him with your unsavoury Breath; but as it happen’d, prov’d at that time something Natural.’
And on they come, each taking a turn at the invective. The slang flows free and fast.
Joan Boss, ‘raving and knitting her Fist against Bess’ notes how Nell ‘served the Baker’s Boy. I see him stand [...] cringing against a Wall’ and Sarah Wyatt reminds ‘Mrs. Joan’ how ‘the Taylor of Spittle-fields made you a Loose boddied Gown [synonymous for a whore], and when he brought it home, put in a Yard [in slang, the penis] more than your Husband allow’d of.’ Speak for yourself, responds Dorothy Evans, and recalls how Sarah – ‘Mrs. Wrigle-Tail...a Cursed piece of Liquerish Damnation’ – ‘receives all and deceives all,’ English, Dutch, Spanish and both ‘the back-door’d Italian’, and ‘the French Man’ who ‘brings up the Rear with Fire and Faggot, Aye and Faith he sticks to your Bumm with a vengeance.’ [7]
The end, after all the melodrama, is strangely anti-climatic. After a final burst from Barbary Adams, Dorothy throws in the towel. Not because of her team’s failure to produce the vituperative goods but because everyone, in their efforts to smear and slander, is being far too honest. No shaming perhaps, but definitely naming, and that way professional reputations are lost. ‘We’ll loose the Wager [...] with all our Hearts, rather than Spoil our Trade; for to be expos’d at this foul rate we shall be ruin’d.’ With a final ‘Farewell, Elizabeth Damnable’ ringing in her ears it is left to Bess to offer the verdict to the audience. ‘Upon which the Company, Clapping hands unanimously Cry’d out Golden-lane, Golden-lane.’
[1] France’s equivalent, the poissarde, i.e. fish-wife, was also known for abuse (‘marchande aux halles grossière et hardie dans ses manières et son langage’ TLiF), and like Billingsgate, also meant ‘bad’ language (the poissardes also spearheaded many riots during the Revolution)
[2] Juniper Lecture 1639 pp. 100-01
[3] Ward London Spy pt II pp. 38-40; pt III p. 48
[4] King Leir (1605) 12.1022L
[5] Westmacott English Spy (1825) I p.342
[1] presumably Barbara but Barbary was north Africa and perhaps she was black
Rosemary Lane, near Tower Bridge, was, in the words of Ned Ward, ‘A heathenish part of the Town… which in ridicule of fragrant fumes that arise from the musty rotten rags and burnt old shoes, is called by the sweet name of Rosemary Lane. Here such a numberless congregation of ill-favoured sluts were gathered together that we thought a fleet of French Protestants had just arrived. (thanks here to Janice Turner An Anatomy of a ‘Disorderly’ Neighbourhood: Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair c. 1690-1765. PhD Thesis U. of Hertfordshire 23 June 2014)