Englysshe lechery

Bill Grundy

The 'Orrible Synne E. J. Burford (Calder and Boyars £3.95) Life in Victorian London L. C. B. Seaman (Batsford £2.50) When Dr Johnson announced that being bored with London is the same as being bored with life, he didn't know the half of it. For he probably had no idea what Londoners had got up to in the past, and he couldn't know what

they would do in the future. These two books would have helped him. It occurs to me that Jonathan Swift could have profited by therm too; they would have heightened quite con. siderably his disgust at the animality of hIs fellows.

The 'Orrible Synne is an 'orrible title for a not-so 'orrible book about lechery in London. Mr Burford has done a sturdy scissors and paste job on the past. If you find difficulty In reading olde Englysshe, then you may find It hard going, although I've no doubt that the subject-material, being of universa' and perennial interest, will make you grit your teeth and struggle through thickets as dense even as this one: "Hwilc weig horhusweard. brother, an Godes naman?" which Mr Burford

assures us is the Anglo-Saxon version of that constant and urgent masculine plea: " In God's name, which house is the whorehouse, mate?"

If Mr Burford is to be believed, the AngloSaxons were always at it. They must have been, for there were codes of penalties for

sexual offences from about 600 AD onwards. Some of the penalties were distinctly off-put" ting (at least, they would have off-put me).

Like this one. ".., if a theow (male servant or menial) rape a female theow, let him make

bote (compensation) with his testicles." That, by the way, is from article twenty-five of the, Code of Conduct of that truly noble and Christian king, Alfred the Great.

Any idea that class-consciousness is a fairlY recent English invention disappears when we read, in another article of the same code, that

adultery with the wife of a 12-hynde (a measure of land) man "Carries a bote of 120

shillings; with the wife of a 6-hynde man. It bote of 100 shillings; and the wife of a churl only 40 shillings..." a clear case of means testing, if ever I saw one. If the Anglo-Saxons were modern in their caste system, they were still more modern al their language. Even in this permissive a&e'

the inhabitants of the area just north of the Guildhall might shudder if they hear What

their streets were once called. For that Wes, one of the first brothel areas of London, aria London Wall intersects a street once called Grape Street, which was a bowdlerisation of the original Gropecuntlane, as descriptive a name as this journal is ever likely to print.

On Bankside, that other earlier and greater brothel area, there was the same frankness.

Horsleydown was once Whores Lie Down, and it was only one of many such alleys. For Bankside was famous. This was the real home of London lechery. What is especiallY interesting is that for centuries the brothels were farmed out very lucratively by Crown

and Church — and were patronised by them as well. It started with William the Conqueror.

who gave the land to Bishop Odo, who passed it to the Abbott of Bermondsey, who sold it to the Bishop of Winchester, who was so involved

fin rack-renting the brothels, that, as every Shakespearean knows, the slang name for a Prostitute was 'Winchester goose.' Six hundred years later, James I was there, along With George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, playing it AC/DC as the fancy took them, if Mr Burford's account is anything to go by. And I see no reason to deny it, because all the records show that Bankside had always catered for anything.

Unfortunately Mr Burford's book stops at the Restoration. How handy if it had gone on up to late Victorian times, so that Mr Seaman could have incorporated it in his book. If you are looking for a guide to the way they lived then, Mr Seaman is your fellow. He's got chapters on just about every aspect of life from the 1830s to the turn of the century — 'Woman: dream and reality,' (where he begins to rub shoulders with Mr Burford); 'Hearth and home,' Shops and shopping,' Theatre and music hall,' and Passing shows.'

But in their own way, the first three chapters are as fascinating as any. Chapter One looks at London Dominant. As Mr Seaman puts it, "In size alone, London has always astonished." At the beginning of the 19th century, it was 12 times bigger than the second largest town in the kingdom, and though this ratio diminished through the century, at the Queen's death London was still about ten times bigger than Liverpool and Manchester.

Size of that order, and the growth that produces it, can only mean problems, and chapter two examines them. Housing, health, and education were just a few. They were giant ones, but there were giant men to tackle them. Men like Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who built the Victoria Embankment, all gardens, flowers and statues. But primarily the Embankment was the cover for a giant intercepting sewer, which cut off the crude sewage flowing into the Thames and took it safely away to treatment works miles down stream. The Thames may still be mucky, but it's a lot better than when, only six years before the Embankment was built, MPs had to leave the Palace of Westminster because the stench from the river was unbearable.

To those of us who sit impotently in London's traffic jams the news that in Victorian times the situation was even worse may make you utter the sort of Anglo-Saxon comment Mr Burford deals with at length-. But Mr Seaman's third chapter proves it beyond doubt. Take one example alone. Remember that the Kingsway-Aldwych complex wasn't built. Then imagine "an enormous press of traffic ... squeezed into the Strand and Fleet Street." And don't forget that the old Temple Bar still stood, a tiny bottleneck through which the flood had to pass. And after all that, beyond St Paul's the flood mingled with another one, generated in Oxford Street ... oh well, on reflection, perhaps it wasn't much worse than today. But that doesn't affect the interest of Mr Seaman's,account of how Londoners moved about in the Victorian age. Generally, it can be described by the one word — slowly.

I've only one real fault to find with each of these books. Mr Burford's extracts are scandalously enjoyable, but I could have wished his linking material had been a mite better written. And Mr Seaman's book is packed with interesting things, but so packed I could have wished it had been a sight longer written. Nevertheless, I learned a lot from both of them, and was reminded by Mr Seaman of something I'd forgotten: that when Anglicans of the 1830s referred to "that godless Institution in Gower Street," they were referring to University College, and not to the editorial office of the Spectator.