Does the term sex industry sound an anachronism when talking about the long 18th century? It’s not; if anything this is when the potential for serious variety in commercial sex was invented. As London emerged from a regime that frowned on fun, profit-oriented endeavours proliferated that rival what we see today. I speak as a longtime historian of prostitution, a word that doesn’t begin to capture the field.
Of course every human group as far back as you like will always have tried everything they could think of to enhance sex, whether it was paid for or not. The difference is scale: When the Protectorate ended, the ban on theatre-going was lifted and women given permission to work as professional actors. Simultaneously there was an explosion of venues to consume drinks and food that came to be associated with sex. Perhaps they were places to pull and make assignations, but evidence shows many involved paying for sex: coffee house, jelly house, molly house, masquerade, flagellation brothel, bagnio, bawdy house, night-house and more. At the same time, the old venues continued in use: alleyways, courtyards, taverns, bridges, waste ground, parks and streets as main as the Strand. Sex was integrated into a new concept of fitness in the commercial Temple of Health and — but I won’t go on.
Large numbers of people made a living from these businesses in non-sexual roles: message-runners, holders of the money-box, waiters, guards, chairmen, watermen, musicians, seamstresses, cleaners and of course purveyors of food and drink. All depended on the commercial exchange without being tainted by the stigma attached to women who provided sex: Orange-girls, flower-girls, posture-dancers, courtesans, demi-reps, mistresses, artists’ models, street whores and, in the cant of the time, buttocks, jilts and cracks: Women of all types and classes sold sex, and people of all kinds profited by the industry.
In William Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress a posture-dancer undresses while servants enter with candle and polished plate for her to stand on — to enhance the view.
Many walking-tours treat Georgians as a specially jolly bawdy lot. A frame that looks at the long 18th century allows understanding of what society was reacting to when London became the sex-capital of Europe and how economic entrepreneurship was as important as sex.
My walk London’s Sex Industry and the Stage in the Long 18th Century happens Saturday 8 June at 1300.
Footnote: The 18th century is also when former and runaway slaves began to make history in London alongside white campaigners. My walk Campaigning for the Abolition of Slavery takes place Saturday 15 June and shares with the sex-industry walk a focus on History from Below.