L M Cooke
  • Home
  • Biog
  • Blog
  • Writings
  • Events
  • Workshops
  • Music
  • Contact
  • Links

History: Gin and bare it

7/11/2016

0 Comments

 
PictureJohn Leech - Punch 33 (10/1/1857) scanned by Phillip V Allingham for http://www.victorianweb.org/periodicals/punch/49.html
Tonight I return to my academic background with a visit to Ridware History Society to give a talk on my Masters dissertation subject: Prostitution in Victorian Lichfield.

Lichfield, a small Cathedral City in Staffordshire may not seem the most obvious candidate for a study of prostitution. However, in its heyday, when the city was filled with a surfeit of single clerics, records of prostitution abounded. In later years Lichfield's strategic importance declined and visitors reduced, but in the latter half of the Victorian era, a new barracks for the Staffordshire Regiment was built on the outskirts of the city. This, in a time when debate was focusing heavily on the fairness - or otherwise -  of the Contagious Diseases Acts, was what prompted my study. The Contagious Diseases Acts were intended to reduced incidences of VD among Her Majesty's armed forces by detaining and treating women identified as prostitutes. Just the women. Not the men. The debates turned into the first female-led campaigns, and paved the way for the later suffrage movements.  

My study included case studies, including one particularly formidable lady. 
Sarah was Lichfield's most prolific offender during the period of my study. Her ‘career’ stretched the full length of the study, from age twenty-three until  forty-one.  It is likely that she had been arrested before then too -  as early as April 1879 she was called “a shameless woman who has figured many times in court.” On her fiftieth occasion before the court, the newspapers called it her “jubilee”

Sarah was married, which research suggests is unusual for a street prostitute.  It isn't impossible that she turned to prostitution to supplement her family’s income.  She also had a child. She experienced periods of homelessness, which included a time where she and her husband separated – and she wasn't averse to resorting to physical violence to settle disputes with her husband.

Her periods of homelessness are perhaps a good indicator of the poverty of some women who turned to prostitution. Studies have shown that prostitutes were generally from lower paid occupations, working as domestic servants and agricultural labourers, where employment might be seasonal. Sarah's husband John was recorded as a labourer.  This, too, may have been seasonal or poorly paid, and in one occasion where Sarah was reported as homeless, her husband having been sentenced to three weeks gaol for sleeping outside only days before.  Sarah and her family were then recorded living at various addresses in Lichfield for the next few years, during which time she served at least eleven gaol sentences - one of four months in 1889 - and received eleven fines.  In November 1889, John was living in Sarah's home with another woman and Sarah, recently released from gaol, was no longer welcome. She spent some time living with her mother, and ‘working in the fields’, and was also arrested several times for sleeping outdoors. She clearly lived a chaotic lifestyle, and her income may have fluctuated greatly over the years.

 Sarah scandalised the court, and her antics were reported in some glee by the local newspaper. On one occasion she told the court to laughter that the arresting Police Constable was a 'respectable friend' of her; while on another, when sentenced to one month imprisonment with hard labour she told the magistrate, 'Thank you very much, sir, I can do that standing on me 'yed'. Again the court laughed.

Despite her entertainment value and her seemingly poor circumstances, very little was done to actually help Sarah. The Victorian focus was on keeping scandal from the streets. It really didn't matter too much what they got up to behind closed doors, including whether they starved. The ruling classes generally considered working class people to be undesirables, people who were necessary but only if they could be kept from sight, and not spoil the everyday aesthetic.
​
In Sarah's case, nothing they did seemed to stop her. She was arrested numerous times for vagrancy, drunkenness, fighting and public disorder (prostitution itself was never made illegal). She took 'the pledge' (to abstain from drink) many times, but always returned to the bottle. The punishments imposed on her did nothing to help her, and certainly did not control her - and her uncontrollable-ness may have actually been her biggest crime.

Isn't it interesting to think that over 100 years later, we're still debating how women and working classes should be controlled?
I
I don't think much of my way of life. You folks as honour, and character and feelings, and such, can't understand how that's been beaten out of people like me. I don't feel. I'm used to it. I did once, more especial when mother died. I heard on it through a friend of mine, who told me her last words were of me. I did cry and go on then every so, but Lor' where's the good of fretting? I arn't happy either. It isn't happiness, but I get enough money to keep me in victuals and drink, and it's the drink mostly that keeps my going. You've no idea how I look forward to my drop of gin. It's everything to me."

 - from an interview with an aging prostitute in Bracebridge Hemyng's 'Prostitution in London'.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    I'm a writer of steampunk/ fantasy fiction, singer/musician and writer at LM Cooke Music, singer in the parody band Mediaeval Biaetches, occasional historian,  and co-presenter of the Gothic Alternative Steampunk and Progressive web radio show.  Here I will ramble vaguely about stuff.  Friends, countrymen, and people who aren't countrymen, lend me your ears...

    Archives

    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012

    Categories

    All
    Cats
    Events
    GASP Show
    General
    Gigs
    Music
    Writing

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Biog
  • Blog
  • Writings
  • Events
  • Workshops
  • Music
  • Contact
  • Links