The Ordeal of St. Sepulchre’S: A Campaign Against Organized Prostitution in Early 19th-Century London and the Emergence of Lower Middle-class Consciousness
| Date | 01 September 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663906066614 |
| Published date | 01 September 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
THE ORDEAL OF
ST. SEPULCHRE’S: A CAMPAIGN
AGAINST ORGANIZED
PROSTITUTION IN EARLY
19TH-CENTURY LONDON AND
THE EMERGENCE OF LOWER
MIDDLE-CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS
ANTONY E. SIMPSON
John Jay College of Criminal Justice Library, USA
ABSTRACT
The article addresses the issue of organized prostitution in London during the 1820s,
a crucial time and place in which modern middle-class values were developing and
being asserted in an essentially urban setting. An account is given of a prolonged and
expensive campaign conducted by one City parish in an effort to suppress the brothels
within its boundaries. Analysis of the parish’s motivation, procedural steps, and the
eventual outcomes of its activities provide insight into lower middle-class attitudes
toward prostitution and the limitations of the legal means available for its control.
The study accordingly attempts to provide a dynamic perspective on the early
mobilization of representatives of this class against a particular and threatening aspect
of urban disorder. It further suggests that this need to confront public behavior
incompatible with the values of a modernizing world in this way was peculiar to the
lower middle classes and perhaps even helped to create their identity.
KEY WORDS
brothels; class formation; criminal law; prosecutions, private; prostitution; public
order offenses
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, www.sagepublications.com
0964 6639, Vol. 15(3), 363–387
DOI: 10.1177/0964663906066614
364
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 15(3)
INTRODUCTION
BROTHELKEEPERSin London appear to have operated throughout most
of the 18th and 19th centuries without much fear of legal constraint.
Relatively few of them were prosecuted and those of them who were
convicted were generally not severely punished. This situation seems para-
doxical as there were strong reasons to suppose that brothels, as well as being
illegal, represented a form of criminal activity which society found particu-
larly reprehensible. This study attempts to resolve this anomaly by identify-
ing the considerable legal difficulties inherent in prosecuting this crime
(‘keeping a bawdy-house’, hereafter KBH) through analysis of the sustained,
and perhaps even desperate, efforts of one City of London parish in the
1820s.
The time and place of these efforts have particular resonance. The middle
classes of the 1820s lived in a world that long preceded the ‘pluralized
consumer culture’ of the middle Victorian period (Hayward, 2004: 70).
Although the City of London had long been dominated by a wealthy upper
middle class, the parishioners of St. Sepulchre’s, the parish supporting the
anti-brothel campaign analyzed here, had little connection to this class. They
did not even have much access to City crime control resources. They were
lower middle-class people whose concerns were immediate and, as will be
demonstrated, personal as much as they were class based.
This analysis is best read as an early instance of the mobilization of the
petite bourgeoisie, a class as yet amorphous in the 1820s because of its recent
and ongoing emergence in sheer size, in its own interests. Little in the way
of ideology is apparent in the attitudes of the worthies of St. Sepulchre’s in
their campaign. However, there is little doubt that the campaign served to
support a commitment to notions of restraint in public urban settings and
indicated a hope that a modernizing system of law might have potential value
in sustaining their efforts.
Before presenting the results of the analysis, it is important to appreciate
just how strongly the unfettered existence of brothels offended the feelings
and lives of those who were stakeholders in society. Reasons for this strength
of feeling are closely related to ambivalent attitudes toward prostitution and
the values and interests of an emerging middle-class persona.
SOCIAL AND LEGAL ATTITUDES TOWARD PROSTITUTION
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, considerable public attention was
directed at prostitution. The close links between street prostitution, disorder,
and crime were fully recognized. In the 18th century and beyond, these
considerations were informed by notions of prostitution as a source of con-
tagion, both moral and physical, especially among the young. Wordsworth
(1850/1936) was not the only one to be both attracted and repelled by
London as ‘a shock, For eyes and ears! What anarchy and din, Barbarian and
SIMPSON: THE ORDEAL OF ST. SEPULCHRE’S
365
infernal – a phantasma’ (p. 546). Nor was Blake (1794/1972) the only
observer to associate spiritual decay with the fact of pervasive venereal infec-
tion: ‘the youthful Harlot’s curse’ (p. 216). These concerns persisted through
Victorian times and in the early 19th century were exacerbated by well-
documented fears of disorder that fed on political unrest in a rapidly growing
and seemingly uncontrollable metropolis (Simpson, 1996; Fisher, 1997;
Henderson, 1999). As far as prostitution was concerned, the problem was
perceived as being of immense proportions. Contemporary estimates of the
size of this deviant population in the metropolis varied considerably, but
80,000 was the number most often cited during the first half of the century.
These estimates were almost certainly overstatements of doubtful proven-
ance, and were probably based on the high visibility of prostitution and on
the persistent image of London as a society beyond the control of existing
authority (Mason, 1994: 73–80; Fisher, 1997: 1–16).
These serious social concerns were always informed by compassion for
prostitutes as a class. Attention was drawn to the youth of women so
engaged, the degradation and short duration of their careers, and likelihood
of early death brought about by a combination of deprivation, alcohol abuse,
and disease. Most would have been familiar with the sad tale of Miss W., as
told to Roderick Random. This once desirable whore, her career curtailed by
venereal disease, eventually ‘degenerates into brutal insensibility, and rots
and dies upon a dunghill’ (Smollett, 1748/1967: 141–2). This characterization
of the typical career of the prostitute may or may not have been based on
fact and the Victorians were more willing to accept that this way of life repre-
sented but one temporary stage in the lives of many working-class women
(Chesney, 1972: 363–43). Contemporary views of the nature and outcome of
the typical prostitute’s career were mixed (Trudgill, 1976: 101–11). However,
for pre-Victorians, the notion of prostitution as an eventually fatal way of
life was generally held as accepted wisdom.
Another factor sustaining a general view of condemning the sin while
having compassion for the sinner was the widespread belief that the ranks of
prostitutes included many young children who had been enticed or
kidnapped into prostitution by bawds who specialized in this end of the
sexual market. There is no doubt that a strong demand for commercialized
sex with children existed. Reports of child brothels abounded in the press
and in detailed terms which suggested that the law permitted them to operate
with relative impunity (see, for example, The Times, 1815a).
Child brothels represented an important part of a well-organized sex
industry and it was estimated that in the 1830s, about 400 people in London
made a living by kidnapping young girls for such purposes (Ryan, 1839:
118–20). Sensational reports in the press frequently documented the ease
with which children could be exploited sexually. In one poignant case, a man
named Branscomb tracked his missing teenage daughter to the doors of a
brothel kept by a Mrs. Rutter. He did not find his daughter there, but he did
find three young girls in a wretched and diseased state who were being kept
forcibly there as prostitutes. These girls testified that Branscomb’s daughter
366
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 15(3)
had been kidnapped by Mrs. Rutter and kept at the house for a period of
time. In spite of this evidence, and in spite of the fact that the prosecution
was encouraged and perhaps financially supported by the Union Hall magis-
trates, Mrs. Rutter could only be convicted of the charge of keeping a dis-
orderly house. At the time of the trial, Mr. Branscomb still had not found his
daughter (The Times, 1810a, 1810b). Child prostitution was quite open: ‘And
it is in the Metropolis that prostitution is so profitable a business, and
conducted so openly, that hundreds of persons keep houses of ill-fame, for
the reception of girls not more then twelve or thirteen years of age, without
a blush on their cheeks, and mix with society heedless of stigma or reproach’
(Egan, 1821: 18–19). This represented but one indicator of the strongly
pedophilic aspect of the sexual preferences of many men, the other being the
very high proportion of cases of sexual assault which involved very young
girls as victims. A study by Clark (1987) demonstrates this proportion to
have been high in the 18th century and even higher in the first half of the
19th. My own work confirms this finding, and suggests that part of the
explanation may be that in folklore of the time congress with a child was
considered the only cure for venereal disease (Simpson, 1987). Another factor
may have been increasing opportunity for exploitation, as the numbers of
destitute children rose dramatically in this period (Duckworth, 2002: 11–37).
Public distaste for brothel keepers was further informed by the widespread
perception that bawdy-houses were of central importance to the entire struc-
ture of prostitution. Such perceptions were...
ST. SEPULCHRE’S: A CAMPAIGN
AGAINST ORGANIZED
PROSTITUTION IN EARLY
19TH-CENTURY LONDON AND
THE EMERGENCE OF LOWER
MIDDLE-CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS
ANTONY E. SIMPSON
John Jay College of Criminal Justice Library, USA
ABSTRACT
The article addresses the issue of organized prostitution in London during the 1820s,
a crucial time and place in which modern middle-class values were developing and
being asserted in an essentially urban setting. An account is given of a prolonged and
expensive campaign conducted by one City parish in an effort to suppress the brothels
within its boundaries. Analysis of the parish’s motivation, procedural steps, and the
eventual outcomes of its activities provide insight into lower middle-class attitudes
toward prostitution and the limitations of the legal means available for its control.
The study accordingly attempts to provide a dynamic perspective on the early
mobilization of representatives of this class against a particular and threatening aspect
of urban disorder. It further suggests that this need to confront public behavior
incompatible with the values of a modernizing world in this way was peculiar to the
lower middle classes and perhaps even helped to create their identity.
KEY WORDS
brothels; class formation; criminal law; prosecutions, private; prostitution; public
order offenses
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, www.sagepublications.com
0964 6639, Vol. 15(3), 363–387
DOI: 10.1177/0964663906066614
364
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 15(3)
INTRODUCTION
BROTHELKEEPERSin London appear to have operated throughout most
of the 18th and 19th centuries without much fear of legal constraint.
Relatively few of them were prosecuted and those of them who were
convicted were generally not severely punished. This situation seems para-
doxical as there were strong reasons to suppose that brothels, as well as being
illegal, represented a form of criminal activity which society found particu-
larly reprehensible. This study attempts to resolve this anomaly by identify-
ing the considerable legal difficulties inherent in prosecuting this crime
(‘keeping a bawdy-house’, hereafter KBH) through analysis of the sustained,
and perhaps even desperate, efforts of one City of London parish in the
1820s.
The time and place of these efforts have particular resonance. The middle
classes of the 1820s lived in a world that long preceded the ‘pluralized
consumer culture’ of the middle Victorian period (Hayward, 2004: 70).
Although the City of London had long been dominated by a wealthy upper
middle class, the parishioners of St. Sepulchre’s, the parish supporting the
anti-brothel campaign analyzed here, had little connection to this class. They
did not even have much access to City crime control resources. They were
lower middle-class people whose concerns were immediate and, as will be
demonstrated, personal as much as they were class based.
This analysis is best read as an early instance of the mobilization of the
petite bourgeoisie, a class as yet amorphous in the 1820s because of its recent
and ongoing emergence in sheer size, in its own interests. Little in the way
of ideology is apparent in the attitudes of the worthies of St. Sepulchre’s in
their campaign. However, there is little doubt that the campaign served to
support a commitment to notions of restraint in public urban settings and
indicated a hope that a modernizing system of law might have potential value
in sustaining their efforts.
Before presenting the results of the analysis, it is important to appreciate
just how strongly the unfettered existence of brothels offended the feelings
and lives of those who were stakeholders in society. Reasons for this strength
of feeling are closely related to ambivalent attitudes toward prostitution and
the values and interests of an emerging middle-class persona.
SOCIAL AND LEGAL ATTITUDES TOWARD PROSTITUTION
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, considerable public attention was
directed at prostitution. The close links between street prostitution, disorder,
and crime were fully recognized. In the 18th century and beyond, these
considerations were informed by notions of prostitution as a source of con-
tagion, both moral and physical, especially among the young. Wordsworth
(1850/1936) was not the only one to be both attracted and repelled by
London as ‘a shock, For eyes and ears! What anarchy and din, Barbarian and
SIMPSON: THE ORDEAL OF ST. SEPULCHRE’S
365
infernal – a phantasma’ (p. 546). Nor was Blake (1794/1972) the only
observer to associate spiritual decay with the fact of pervasive venereal infec-
tion: ‘the youthful Harlot’s curse’ (p. 216). These concerns persisted through
Victorian times and in the early 19th century were exacerbated by well-
documented fears of disorder that fed on political unrest in a rapidly growing
and seemingly uncontrollable metropolis (Simpson, 1996; Fisher, 1997;
Henderson, 1999). As far as prostitution was concerned, the problem was
perceived as being of immense proportions. Contemporary estimates of the
size of this deviant population in the metropolis varied considerably, but
80,000 was the number most often cited during the first half of the century.
These estimates were almost certainly overstatements of doubtful proven-
ance, and were probably based on the high visibility of prostitution and on
the persistent image of London as a society beyond the control of existing
authority (Mason, 1994: 73–80; Fisher, 1997: 1–16).
These serious social concerns were always informed by compassion for
prostitutes as a class. Attention was drawn to the youth of women so
engaged, the degradation and short duration of their careers, and likelihood
of early death brought about by a combination of deprivation, alcohol abuse,
and disease. Most would have been familiar with the sad tale of Miss W., as
told to Roderick Random. This once desirable whore, her career curtailed by
venereal disease, eventually ‘degenerates into brutal insensibility, and rots
and dies upon a dunghill’ (Smollett, 1748/1967: 141–2). This characterization
of the typical career of the prostitute may or may not have been based on
fact and the Victorians were more willing to accept that this way of life repre-
sented but one temporary stage in the lives of many working-class women
(Chesney, 1972: 363–43). Contemporary views of the nature and outcome of
the typical prostitute’s career were mixed (Trudgill, 1976: 101–11). However,
for pre-Victorians, the notion of prostitution as an eventually fatal way of
life was generally held as accepted wisdom.
Another factor sustaining a general view of condemning the sin while
having compassion for the sinner was the widespread belief that the ranks of
prostitutes included many young children who had been enticed or
kidnapped into prostitution by bawds who specialized in this end of the
sexual market. There is no doubt that a strong demand for commercialized
sex with children existed. Reports of child brothels abounded in the press
and in detailed terms which suggested that the law permitted them to operate
with relative impunity (see, for example, The Times, 1815a).
Child brothels represented an important part of a well-organized sex
industry and it was estimated that in the 1830s, about 400 people in London
made a living by kidnapping young girls for such purposes (Ryan, 1839:
118–20). Sensational reports in the press frequently documented the ease
with which children could be exploited sexually. In one poignant case, a man
named Branscomb tracked his missing teenage daughter to the doors of a
brothel kept by a Mrs. Rutter. He did not find his daughter there, but he did
find three young girls in a wretched and diseased state who were being kept
forcibly there as prostitutes. These girls testified that Branscomb’s daughter
366
SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 15(3)
had been kidnapped by Mrs. Rutter and kept at the house for a period of
time. In spite of this evidence, and in spite of the fact that the prosecution
was encouraged and perhaps financially supported by the Union Hall magis-
trates, Mrs. Rutter could only be convicted of the charge of keeping a dis-
orderly house. At the time of the trial, Mr. Branscomb still had not found his
daughter (The Times, 1810a, 1810b). Child prostitution was quite open: ‘And
it is in the Metropolis that prostitution is so profitable a business, and
conducted so openly, that hundreds of persons keep houses of ill-fame, for
the reception of girls not more then twelve or thirteen years of age, without
a blush on their cheeks, and mix with society heedless of stigma or reproach’
(Egan, 1821: 18–19). This represented but one indicator of the strongly
pedophilic aspect of the sexual preferences of many men, the other being the
very high proportion of cases of sexual assault which involved very young
girls as victims. A study by Clark (1987) demonstrates this proportion to
have been high in the 18th century and even higher in the first half of the
19th. My own work confirms this finding, and suggests that part of the
explanation may be that in folklore of the time congress with a child was
considered the only cure for venereal disease (Simpson, 1987). Another factor
may have been increasing opportunity for exploitation, as the numbers of
destitute children rose dramatically in this period (Duckworth, 2002: 11–37).
Public distaste for brothel keepers was further informed by the widespread
perception that bawdy-houses were of central importance to the entire struc-
ture of prostitution. Such perceptions were...
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