sings … yet is he not giddy, or drunk, but walks and dances … after a little Time he falls asleep, and sleepeth very soundly and quietly; and when he wakes, he finds himself mightily refresh’d, and exceeding hungry.
Hooke obtained his score from a sea captain in a coffee house, no doubt along with many others.
The Mohocks committed acts of street violence on both men and women, but although their victims appear randomly chosen, the damage inflicted was not. Watchmen were badly beaten and women humiliated. Two women were stabbed through the lower lip, perhaps in a bizarre piercing ritual.
When caught, the men were all young ‘gentlemen’ and often associated with the Inns of Court. Bail was set at hundreds of pounds. The ringleader of the 1712 violence was thought to be Lord Hinchingbrooke, but his arrest did not stop him becoming a Member of Parliament the following year. Some of those arrested for involvement in the violence were later called to the Bar.
Students didn’t only learn the law, but also dancing and fencing and various other social skills thought necessary. In 1744, a court case at the Old Bailey recorded the trial of Ann Duck, born in ‘ Little White Alley , Chancery-lane, the Daughter of one Duck, a Black, well known to many Gentlemen in our Inns of Court, by teaching them the Use of the Small Sword, of which he was a very good master’. Ann went on to teach young men the use of the small sword too, but as a prostitute.
As a community of young affluent men, the Inns of Court were a natural magnet for prostitutes of the better sort. The ward of Farringdon Without contained over seventy bawdy houses – more than half the City’s brothels in the early part of the century. There was speculation that educated young women who had fallen on hard times ventured into longer-term agreements with the students, flitting in and out of Temple or Lincoln’s Inn with their faces masked. Common prostitutes also sought keepers amongst the students and barristers, such as the ‘ luscious’ Miss Sh—rd:
… a most pleasing
pupil
of
pleasure
, and perfectly competent to the instruction of those who desire to be announced
Students
of the
mysteries of Venus
. She is about 20, and a single guinea will content her … [she] has several City friends, and lawyers from Gray’s Inn and Temple .
And so, even the respectable legal engine of London hosted gangs, drug takers and prostitutes, making many barristers not so far removed from those who sat in the dock.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the margins of the City were little more than a varied combination of hotchpotch urban overspill, but soon the old houses and brothels were swept away in a frenzy of building and rebuilding. Only Temple and the Inns of Court remain almost unchanged since the early eighteenth century, when a new London had already run away westwards along the Strand.
4. Bloomsbury, Covent Garden and the Strand
For a long time, Bloomsbury was part of the parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields. In 1624, Bloomsbury had 136 houses; by 1710, a return was made to Parliament which indicated that St Giles alone contained almost 35,000 inhabitants catered for by one church, three chapels and a Presbyterian Meeting House. The government decided to create a new parish to the north. In 1724, it came into being as St George’s, Bloomsbury. The parish church was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, who came in with an estimate of £9,790 and exceeded it by just £3. It was orientated north–south, to fit the plot, and has an oddly stepped steeple with a statue of George I on the top. By the end of the eighteenth century , the parish contained 3,000 houses.
The changes in Bloomsbury were remarkable and some of the most dramatic in Georgian London: ‘ The fields where robberies and murders had been committed, the scene of depravity and wickedness the most hideous for centuries, became … rapidly metamorphosed into splendid
Hooke obtained his score from a sea captain in a coffee house, no doubt along with many others.
The Mohocks committed acts of street violence on both men and women, but although their victims appear randomly chosen, the damage inflicted was not. Watchmen were badly beaten and women humiliated. Two women were stabbed through the lower lip, perhaps in a bizarre piercing ritual.
When caught, the men were all young ‘gentlemen’ and often associated with the Inns of Court. Bail was set at hundreds of pounds. The ringleader of the 1712 violence was thought to be Lord Hinchingbrooke, but his arrest did not stop him becoming a Member of Parliament the following year. Some of those arrested for involvement in the violence were later called to the Bar.
Students didn’t only learn the law, but also dancing and fencing and various other social skills thought necessary. In 1744, a court case at the Old Bailey recorded the trial of Ann Duck, born in ‘ Little White Alley , Chancery-lane, the Daughter of one Duck, a Black, well known to many Gentlemen in our Inns of Court, by teaching them the Use of the Small Sword, of which he was a very good master’. Ann went on to teach young men the use of the small sword too, but as a prostitute.
As a community of young affluent men, the Inns of Court were a natural magnet for prostitutes of the better sort. The ward of Farringdon Without contained over seventy bawdy houses – more than half the City’s brothels in the early part of the century. There was speculation that educated young women who had fallen on hard times ventured into longer-term agreements with the students, flitting in and out of Temple or Lincoln’s Inn with their faces masked. Common prostitutes also sought keepers amongst the students and barristers, such as the ‘ luscious’ Miss Sh—rd:
… a most pleasing
pupil
of
pleasure
, and perfectly competent to the instruction of those who desire to be announced
Students
of the
mysteries of Venus
. She is about 20, and a single guinea will content her … [she] has several City friends, and lawyers from Gray’s Inn and Temple .
And so, even the respectable legal engine of London hosted gangs, drug takers and prostitutes, making many barristers not so far removed from those who sat in the dock.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the margins of the City were little more than a varied combination of hotchpotch urban overspill, but soon the old houses and brothels were swept away in a frenzy of building and rebuilding. Only Temple and the Inns of Court remain almost unchanged since the early eighteenth century, when a new London had already run away westwards along the Strand.
4. Bloomsbury, Covent Garden and the Strand
For a long time, Bloomsbury was part of the parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields. In 1624, Bloomsbury had 136 houses; by 1710, a return was made to Parliament which indicated that St Giles alone contained almost 35,000 inhabitants catered for by one church, three chapels and a Presbyterian Meeting House. The government decided to create a new parish to the north. In 1724, it came into being as St George’s, Bloomsbury. The parish church was designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, who came in with an estimate of £9,790 and exceeded it by just £3. It was orientated north–south, to fit the plot, and has an oddly stepped steeple with a statue of George I on the top. By the end of the eighteenth century , the parish contained 3,000 houses.
The changes in Bloomsbury were remarkable and some of the most dramatic in Georgian London: ‘ The fields where robberies and murders had been committed, the scene of depravity and wickedness the most hideous for centuries, became … rapidly metamorphosed into splendid
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