Major colonial cities did have a few brothels, but Byrd’s inability to find a Williamsburg prostitute showed that the undercover activities he relished openly in London were less common throughout America. In London also, there was no need to keep secret diaries about sexual activities; one lord who functioned as prime minister early in the century, Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was known for having as his mistresses the most expensive women in London, and for occasionally dashing naked through the park. Once, when he received a governmental appointment and his salary was published, a town madam [woman who ran a brothel, most likely] exulted, “Five thousand a year, my girls, and all for us!”
As Byrd and other impressed colonists found out, members of “gentlemen’s clubs” in London could openly exchange mistresses and circulate lists of approved harlots, with notes on their talents and peculiarities. Newspapers contained ads such as: “Wanted, A Woman [with] bosom full and plump, firm and white, lively conversation with one looking as if she could feel delight where she wishes to give it.” One club printed a Guide to a Whoremonger’s London. Sacrilege also was fashionable in the metropolis; through 1721 gentlemen could frequent several clubs called “Hell-Fire” that conformed to “a more transcendent Malignity; deriding the Forms and Religion as a Trifle.” One club even had on its menu “Hell Fire Punch,” “Holy Ghost Pye,” “Devil’s Loins,” and “Breast of Venus.”
Bonus:
[The author elaborates a bit in the Notes section of the book.]
Later in the century some of the annotations became particularly florid; for example, John Wilkes (p. 22) recommended one “Effie” to his friend Charles Churchill, praising her ability for “translating the language of love into a rich, libidinous and ribald phraseology which lends enchantment to her amoristic acrobatics.”
It was said that at club meetings “Each man strives who in Sin shall most about, / And fills his Mouth with Oaths of dreadful sound.”
Source:
Olasky, Marvin. “Golden Chains.” Fighting for Liberty and Virtue: Political and Cultural Wars in Eighteenth-Century America. Crossway Books, 1995. 51. Print.
Original Source(s) Listed:
Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness: The First Century of Urban Life in America, 1625-1742 (New York: Knopf, 1960), 226-27.
Louis Kronenberger, Kings & Desperate Men (New York: Knopf, 1942), 26.
McCormick, The Hell-Fire Club, 21-23.
Weekly Journal, 20 February 1720, 380-81; cited in Louis C. Jones, The Blubs of the Georgian Rakes, 37.
The Hell-Fire Club, kept by a Society of Blasphemers (London, 1721), 19; cited in Ronald Fuller, Hell-Fire Francis (London: Chatto & Windus, 1939), 25.
Further Reading:
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