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SUMMARY:London's Sex Industry and the Stage in the Long 18th Century
DESCRIPTION:When the Puritan Protectorate ended in 1660\, London’s sex industry grew wildly public and was linked to both theatres and the underworld.\nCharles II lifted the Puritan ban on theatre-going\, and by 1700 London was sex-capital of Europe. This walk starts with the stage at a time when all actresses were assumed to be prostitutes and theatres a place for clients to find them. We pass through areas where street-walkers and bawdy houses were closely linked with playhouses\, and we hear about high-class masquerades where actress-courtesans like Sophia Baddeley might appear. There are the bawds who kept houses\, the women who worked in them\, like Sally Salisbury\, and Harris’s List\, where they might advertise. We hear about homosexual Molly Houses as well as Jelly Houses\, Coffee Houses and Bagnios. \nLinks between corrupt government officials and criminals formed the plot of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera in 1728\, with its cast of thief-takers\, highwaymen\, pickpockets and sex workers like Jenny Diver\, who met in flash houses where they spoke a secret language. The unscrupulous Society for the Reform of Manners tried to close down vice\, but things began to change when Social Reformers said women selling sex were victims needing rescue. \nThe walk starts in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and passes through Covent Garden and surrounding streets like Drury Lane\, where ordinary folks lived who sold sex – orange-girls like Nell Gwyn\, flower girls and all women unable to make ends meet on very low incomes. The underworld called this red-light area the Hundreds of Drury.
URL:https://camdenguides.com/event/londons-sex-industry-and-the-stage-in-the-long-18th-century-6/
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