By the 1740s and 1750s rambunctious Saturday-night clubs operated with open infamy once again, and in England, unlike in America, it increasingly came to be believed that, “If a gentleman were a man of Taste, and behaved in public with decorum, his private amusements were his own concern.”
These club men were no boy scouts, and their amusements often became public. Young “rakes” in groups often would tour the brothels in the vicinity of Covent Garden both for whoring and to break windows, furniture, and sometimes the bodies of the women who were their freelance employees and victims. William Hogarth’s *The Rake’s Progress” was only one of the popular series of prints that depicted such nocturnal pursuits; another print showed a scene described in verses beneath the picture: The Leader of the Rake Pack, “tho he Risks his life/Will from the Husband force the Wife,/As rudely his companions treat All that in Petticoats they meet./The Women Struggle, Scream and Scratch Loud Swear the men…”
Activities of rakes bear some similarity to those of gang members today, except that their social class then was higher and their level of armament lower.
Author’s Note:
A woman alone on the street after dark, and sometimes even one accompanied by a man, could be subject to gang rape.
Source:
Olasky, Marvin. “Golden Chains.” Fighting for Liberty and Virtue: Political and Cultural Wars in Eighteenth-Century America. Crossway Books, 1995. 52. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Oxford Magazine, May 1772, 186.
Further Reading:
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