Uncovering the Secrets of the Georgians | The Real 'Bridgerton' with Kate Lister

Lucy Cooper Charlotte Hayes Becky lefer what did all these women have in common well they were all featured in a book that could fit inside a gentleman's waist coat the list of Cent Garden ladies and Almanac of sex workers welcome to sex in Georgian Britain when you think of sex in the Georgian period you're probably thinking about the Netflix series Bridgeton Bridgeton pokes its not into an incredibly wealthy group of siblings and the society that surrounds them the stories Focus closely on lots of sexy young people having a lot of romance and surprisingly loads of sex Jane Austin was never this much fun but this kind of sex wasn't the reality for most people in this period so what was it really like back then Bridgeton Pride and Prejudice or something else I'm Dr Kate liser and I'll be guiding you through sex in the gritty Georgian period we'll be taking off the rose tinted glasses of the Regency as we unlace the corsets and unbutton the Brites of the Georgians but if we turn it around here it's caused a hall in the skull is that a real skull that's a real skull poor booger yeah meeting expert historians do you think it was wet they wet it well um felopio does suggest saliva so yeah yes there's just no amount of spit in the world that's going to make it's not enough it's not going to make it comfortable is it I'm going to find out what real people were up to in the bedrooms backrooms and even caves of the 18th [Music] century this is a program about sex drugs and rock and roll historically of course but you need to consider this your fair du's warning if you are easily shocked or easily offended just give us a skip don't be writing as angry letters later cuz we are talking about sex in Georgia and Britain I'm starting my adventure into the world of Georgian sex right here in Covent Garden today this place draws thousands of tourists eager to visit one of London's most famous marketplaces and have a share of the fun but just like to today in the 18th century this place was a thriving entertainment area here people from all walks of life came together to create a blended social landscape Jukes would be rubbing shoulders with popers and publicans and it was a place where sex workers could become celebrities in the Georgian period this was the bustling heart of the entire city there would have been shops and restaurants and coffee houses and booes much like there is today and people all all over the place and of course lots and lots of sex the Georgians didn't invent sex not by a long shot but did they ever enjoy it in fact in many ways the Georgian period saw the first modern sexual Revolution attitudes to sex before the Georgians was largely based in Christian religious teaching now that didn't stop in the 18th century but it certainly loosened when was the Georgian period you ask well it was from 1714 to 1837 and it was marked by Four Kings George George George George and another one called William who really was letting the side down as far as names go but it was a period in our history marked by phenomenal change social political cultural and sexual it was loud it was outrageous it was a revolution but how did this growing sexual Revolution begin one of the ways that people could qu well their sexual needs just like today was through porn and erotic fiction hundreds of years before the internet porn was Big Business historian Julie peakman is on hand to show me more Julie peakman we are here in a pub which is one of my favorite places to talk to you about one of my favorite historical subjects porn so the Georgians they have a reputation for being a pretty racy bunch a right bunch of goers did they have porn they had lots of pornography um however at the early part of the period when pornography was developing it was mainly euphemistic um erotica okay so it wasn't full-blown graphic sex that started with the Italians in fact in the 16th century and it was only by the middle of um the 18th century that we actually got our own British homegrown uh porography like that is of patriotic porn yeah and John Cleland was obviously responsible for that um Mr Fanny Hill yeah actually it was called Memoirs of a woman of pleasure um and it became commonly known as Fanny Hill Fanny Hill was published in 1748 and tells the story of Fanny's sexual Coming of Age it was a best seller and it was the first erotic novel that we had here in the UK can I ask what's the difference between erotica and porn it wasn't just um sort of trashy sexy books but it was also things like salacious poems that came out uh Rial songs that came out and things like sex manuals so very often they were classes erotica rather than the graphic novellas that came out which weed classes as as proper pornography was that porn book shops or would it be like that you had to go into like the 18th century equivalent of a water stones and kind of give it like a wink wink nudge nudge something for the weekend sir it was a bit more public than that actually very often they they they'd sell them from the back of um back door with taverns like this and coffee shops under the counter literacy rates couldn't have been amazing in the 18th century and if a lot of the porn SL erotica that's coming out is the written word was this a rich man's game you could get very beautiful leatherbound pornography um which was for the elite gentleman however um for the midling sort could get sort of um just bound and stitched um paper versions or going right down to the the lower classes you could get broad sheets you could get it throughout the whole spectrum of society do you think it changed attitudes to to women that have been selling sex I don't think attitudes had changed much right up until today I think misogyny is just still R um and you look at um the erotica I find the most interesting thing about the early um pornography and erotica was that there was this sort of joint uh Jolly equality when they were having sex and yet as it developed by the 19th century you get increasing violence towards women but it wasn't just porn and erotic fiction that people could buy with their extra cash there were hundreds of women from Street Walkers to cortis who were all exchanging a night with Venus for a price now if you were looking for a good time Georgian Covent Garden was the place to be this was the Regency hotspot for all kinds of frolics including those engaging in the rather naughtier aspects of the ton and there was one Legend legendary location where you could easily find a Bed fellow for the night right here where I'm stood there was once the famous Shakespeare's Head Tavern it burned down in 1808 but before that it had been immortalized by a man called Jack Harris alongside several hundred women who were selling sex in the capital in his list of Covent Garden ladies Harris's list was a huge part of George and London's rockus SE trade written by the so-called pimp general of all England there were women in here for anything that you fancied to look at a copy of Harris's list from 1777 and find out exactly who this mysterious Harris was I'm meeting historian Katie wigner Katie thank you so much for talking to me about this absolutely fascinating historical document Harris's list but before we get into who was on it and what it has to say about them who was Harris was he even a real person so Harris was a real person goes by the name of Jack Harris and Jack Harris was part of Covent Garden Society he was right in there he was actually the head waiter at one of the busiest most notorious coffee houses the Shakespeare's head so because of that he knew everything that was going on and a bit like a concierge now what's really interesting is that we don't think he he actually wrote the list he had the information but the list was actually written kind of like a a ghost writer by a man born in Dublin called Samuel Derek so he uses Jack Harris's name and cache but he's the one doing all the work exactly I know scandalous um but what's interesting is it probably only succeeded because Jack Harris had that Authority if you were a sex worker in in Old London Town garden and you wanted to get on this list what was the process for that it it's quite hard actually to to piece together how it worked we do have a bit of an Insight from a memoir probably not written by Fanny Murray who was a famous corisan she talks about um going to Harris having to pay uh 2020 being medically examined and kind of having a written assurance and then she could be included in the list whether that was the same that everyone I'm not quite sure the list is jam-pack full of really colorful and flamboyant characters and descriptions which among them stand out to you it's a weird question but do you have any favorites I think I'm just a sucker for these like metaphors I think so um Simon dere when he's writing this he actually says as this lady so this is Mrs Dixon on Holland Street as this lady has received favors from an officer in the Navy we shall describe her in the Marine style he says an old ship in the service been cruising for several years but is very little damaged has many a broadside poured upon her which is less nice but often boarded seldom sprung a leak so that's that's good I got to change my Tinder profile immediately you might want to include this as well so it says near six foot from head to Stone a no I'm not that's that's not me but still impressed that she's six foot head to stern yeah so it actually seems to be a fairly you know complimentary one of the things I find really interesting in it is it gives the age what kind of Ages are we talking about here I think from most of which I've read it says sort of two and 20 but then often when it says oh she's 2 and 20 and she's been in the game a few a few years um from some of the stories of more the famous stands certainly you know that they've been kept as Mistresses from the age of 14 you know still at that time I think the age of consent was 12 until it was raised to 13 in around the 1880s and then to 16 later so yeah there is a lot of uncomfortable there nice not nice and the real push you know the real prize of virginity that they're obsessed with that absolutely obsessed and and you know they wouldn't probably even appear in Harris's list as virgins that would be the biggest commodity uh in the sex industry which is fairly sickening it is so it's really nasty but there is this trade in very very young girls um and it doesn't even seem to have been that hushed up because what they're talking about the ages of some of these girls here but conversely it's not just a young woman's game there are older women in this list who are still still going strong yeah absolutely I I mean old of course very very comparative today but certainly women in their 40s are mentioned in the list here but sometimes the women are listed as you know chiefly dealing in Old fellows cuz people of course are attracted to all manner of different things Harris's list gives us a key insight into sex work on the Streets of London this highlights how sex work was very much out in the open in Georgian Society but it wasn't just London that had one of these lists Edinburgh and Scotland had one too Edinburgh in the Georgian period was a polluted dirty and densely populated place Edinburgh new town was created in the 1760s and those who could afford it gradually moved into this new glitzy urban center those in the lower classes still remained here in Oldtown and even edinburgh's Elite Society still had to Trek Back to the Oldtown for one of its biggest industries sex I'm traveling there to investigate how these booklets manag to entice buyers across the borders too of course London wasn't the only city to have an almanac of sex workers Edinburgh had one too published in 1775 the impartial list of the ladies of pleasure it listed the skills the description the address and the costs of some 66 women selling sex all around the Capital several of whom are described as selling sex in this area right here on Belle's wind who wrote it a man obviously his name was James titler and when he wasn't documenting the ins and outs of Edinburgh sex workers he actually edited the encyclopedia britanica and he was the first Scottish man to go up in a hot air balloon but when it came to describing the women in his list I think it's fair to say that he blew very hot and cold but at least he started strong he starts with a defense of the women selling sex in the capital why shall the victims of this natural propensity the volunteers of Venus be hunted like Outcast from society be perpetually gripped by the hand of petty tyranny and the whole race of mankind are the object of their warm regards all across the closest alleys of this Georgian Powerhouse of a city were women selling sex here in Belle's wind was Miss Walker and her eight female sex workers and there were brothel and women working alone all over this area further down from Belle's wind was Miss cob of Monte's close if you were on the hunt for a partner you would find her hanging around mon teeth close here is his description of Miss cob this lady is short and Lusty with dark brown hair good skin and teeth and is about 27 years of age she is sulky and disagreeable in company we are sorry to give her the character but we are determined to be impartial I hope for Miss Cobb's sake that she never actually read that but one of the things he does say about her and he says it about lots of women on this list is he likes the fact that they have teeth which doesn't as much tell us about these women's teeth but a fact about the fact that so few people at the time did have teeth for that to have been an endearing and notable characteristic something that you would actually seek out in a partner they had teeth onto a winner a little bit further down the road was another woman working this patch apparently of high birth lady [Music] agnu according to Tyler this was the hunting ground of one miss lady agnu who is cited in his list he's going to start strong this drunken bundle of iniquity is about 50 years of age Lusty and tall one thing she can boast of is that she is the daughter of a late baronet who was who was a brave General in the war before last being a disgrace to her relations who are some of the best in Scotland they sent her to the North she regards neither y nor decorum and would willingly lie with a chimney sweep as a lord I told you he was snotty I told you he was downright he's got this really odd attitude to these women of course she would lie with a chimney sweep as well as a lord she's doing it for the money that she's not doing it because she wants to date somebody her background story is really interesting I don't I don't want to do her down and say that she wasn't the daughter of a baronet Bor I will say is that then just like today it's all about creating a persona it's all about fake names and fake backgrounds and fake stories to tell the punters to tell people like titler so they can write it up in their little book I don't know if she really was the daughter of a baronet but it's a great story walking around the streets of Edinburgh of a Tuesday evening it makes me think about the women that that titler was writing about in very different way he had his own agenda but one thing I'm struck by is it's a Tuesday evening it's cold out here and it's dark and I've got a Woolen coat on and I'm well lit it how would those women have worked these streets and they would have done all around here it must have been Grim it must have been really Grim what I find frustrating about people like titler and Harris I'm so pleased that they wrote those works I really am because if they hadn't we'd have nothing about those women we wouldn't know anything about them at all but it's like it takes us so close to them and then we can't get any further because they didn't write those reviews none of it is in their words it's all filtered through the pen of a man who had a completely different agenda I guess we'll never know these lists give us hints and glimpses into who these women were and what they got up to in the back rooms and bedrooms but it wasn't just these lists of sex workers that helped guide us through the intricacies of sex in the Georgian age the history of contraception can illustrate some of the Lesser known aspects of this world and one device that we still use today was becoming integral for defending against pregnancy and disease The Humble condom in the 18th century they were big business and you might have called yours a glove or your armor or my personal favorite your machine Casanova famously called his English raincoats and if anyone knew the value of a good condom it was kasanova but what we want to know how were they made who was wearing them and perhaps most importantly of all were they any good at protecting against venial disease and pregnancy well I am going to find out now we don't know where the word condom comes from it's not from the infamous Colonel condom do to Charles the second or from a town in France called condom but we do know that one of the earliest uses of the word was actually here in edinb in 1706 in an anti-union poem about the British bringing bad behavior to Scotland through the newly formed Union I'm at the incredible new hail's house in Edinburgh to find out more about this fascinating topic with condom historian Dr Kate Stevenson so Kate we are here to talk condoms yes we are it's really easy to think of condoms as being modern something that we've only come up with in the last few Generations but that's not right no no uh and and there are lots of stories out there that they go back thousands and thousands of years now we we don't have a lot of evidence for that but we do know that they they definitely existed from the 1500s the first record we have comes from an Italian anatomist called Gabriel felopio of Fallopian tube Fame indeed yes but a few years later another Italian comes along Hercules of saxonia he talks about linen linen condoms linen sheaths although of course they aren't called condoms in the 1500s yeah now actually I did have a go at making one from entire guesswork so we can we can have a look at that oh my God Kate you Legend what have you done literally what that is it is a you've been very generous therec well so it's not supposed to sit on tight and that is part of the description so you've got a little drawring here to tie it around to hold it in place like an oven mitt that's essentially what you're putting on it may be something that had spermicidal properties but we don't know for sure these these stick around for about a hundred years that long yeah that long but not in Mass usage I've been laughing at it but like it never even would that have protected against anything apart from enjoyable not in this state but if they were treating it I do wonder if it was treated with like grease then it would form more of a barrier and make the lubrication a lot better okay but no one's done any experiments on it so which is probably for the best it's useless really isn't it essentially that's right okay but it is sort of the prototype for where condoms come from yeah yeah okay but then moving on from that at some point probably in the 1600s they start to produce something similarly sized a bit narrower made of dried animal gut still got its little ribbon around the bottom H because of course and the idea is that they're dried out for storage so they can't go off and then you rehydrate them before use so you would have them and then you'd have to rehydrate them and then what would you do so you could wash them out dry them out and reuse them ah so they were reusable not forever but certainly for multiple times okay and they were it seems pretty widely used there are a lot of references that particularly grow up in the 18th century of middle class and upper class men using them quite widely okay and of brothels supplying them how would you make them well funny you should mention that last week I had to go no you hav't I did I did uh so the reason we know how they were made was because there's come the early 1800s there's actually some instructions that start to be published so you can make the at home um before that they would be manufactured in in workshops okay but they start producing recipes and so we can follow those and essentially what you do is you take intestines and they can come from a range of sources and we do know that there was a um a trade in glass blown penis shapes essentially to dry your condoms on um the other way which is the one I used is basically to blow up lengths of intestines clip each end or not each end and dry them inflated then when they're completely dry they go papery essentially because you've got rid of all the fat and you end up with these sort of dry papery sheets so I've got a couple here of different lengths cuz we know they were made in different lengths oh my goodness so this one's slightly longer and they are these are folded in half these are quite narrow ones you also got them in different widths as well so they actually feel just a bit like tracing paper or something like that I cannot believe that you made this this is and that's the knotted end noted end and then here's your Ribbon this is sewn round so you would have wet this it would have become more malleable y then you would wriggle it on to an erect Willie yep Tie it in place tie it in a bow yep well here's the million dooll Quest I'm going to give you back this you've done such an incredible job I don't want to break that but would that have been effective well we haven't run any tests on sort of surviving examples but we do know that modern lamb skin is very effective at preven ing pregnancy so it's about the same as modern condoms it's about 98% um effective at preventing pregnancy completely useless at preventing the spread of veneral disease it wouldn't have worked but it's kind of good to see that people were they were trying sex yeah wow okay where would you have bought these from you could get these from like chemists and druggists and things like that you get them from Barbers we do know that you could get them direct from the creators and a lot of those creators or certainly the ones that we know about were women and so they were running essentially factories uh factory production of condoms and selling them wholeale to chemists but also selling them direct to to clients who would come up to where they had the factory and and buy them sometimes in bulk if they were going abroad uh from from the source and slightly more cheaply as well condoms were a huge part of sex and sex work in the 18th century people put a lot of faith in these rather unreliable contraceptive to not get pregnant and to not fall sick but we know that they didn't always work effectively which in some cases could lead to a dire situation so sexually transmitted disease was Rife we can see one such situation in William hogus a hara's progress printed in 1732 this tells a story of a young woman called mul hack about who arrives in London falls into sexw work contracts an infection which eventually leads to her ruination and death age just 23 as usual with hogar the images six plates in total they're so packed full of detail they're so satirical every time you look at them you see something new if we look at the first one here this is Maul fresh off the stage coach from the countryside into London the woman she's talking to here was a famous board or Madam in London known as mother Nom and these people boards were famous for honeying around at the staging coach is looking for young women who had just arrived in the big city they' tell them that they were going to give them a job and that they could sort them out with somewhere to stay and then before they knew what had happened they were locked up in a house and forced to sell sex Maul's face is really fresh here and if you look at mother needam you can see the syphilitic marks that she's trying to cover up with beauty spots the whole thing is full of forboding and it's intimidating and scary and poor mul has absolutely no idea what's going to happen to her mul is now the kept Mistress of a wealthy man we can see her in luxurious surroundings but this might not lasts long as if you look in the background there is a young man possibly Maul's lover sneaking out of the door this is Maul at the height of her powers by now the man must have chucked her out her room is nowhere near as fancy as her previous lodgings Maul she's looking all right she's got a nice dress on but coming through the door are the men of the Society of reformation of manners who targeted women like Maul and sent them to jail and that's exactly where she's ended up Maul is in a data's prison she's definitely looking a bit sorry for herself that fresh-faced glow has gone and she's been robbed she's no longer the queen of this world she's a victim of it and I'm afraid things do not improve for our girl this is endgame for mul she's clearly very sick the scene behind her is chaos the room is squalled and she's being robbed this is not a good world for our mall to be in at all in the final scene we see Maul's funeral people are gathered around supposedly to mourn her but when you look a bit more closely nobody's mour Maul you see these two ladies in the background crying well actually they're crying over a broken fingernail there's a priest and you might think that's good but look a little bit more closely and you'll see that he has his hand underneath his cassic on his lap there's a real sense here that Maul has died but nobody here is learning from this nobody is seeing the is a terrible warning or trying to change their ways in fact everything grinds on exactly as it did before the next victims of it are already here but how accurate was this story we know that it happened because we have court records and cases and moralists and people wrote about it and as thousands of people left the countryside for new lives in the city they were easy prey easy prey for people trying to exploit them the figure of mother nom the board The Madam of the brothel she was real London Edinburgh bath cities all over the country they just ate people up and spat them out they didn't stand a chance really it still happens to this very day the story of maul is the story of thousands and thousands of nameless women all throughout history Hogarth makes it clear that Maul most likely died of a sexually trans transmitted infection these were Rife across the 18th century so many people would have lost their lives to these horrific and debilitating diseases in the Bridgeton Universe men are often seen sleeping with unmarried women sometimes sex workers prior to their romantic love interest in the main story in series 2 Anthony the eldest brother is shown sleeping with a variety of women before he is sent to the marriage Market of the ton perhaps the reason that Miss Kate Sharma his future love interest and all most his sister-in-law object to the match between him and a younger sister is due to the rumors of his previous tances in the real historical World STI were a massive problem that thousands were facing in cities like Edinburgh it all looked rather prim and proper but in reality these diseases were running wild and I'm here to talk to you about one of the most feared venial diseases in our history a disease that could destroy your body destroy your mind and make your nose fall off yep we're here to talk about syphilis I'm traveling to the surgeon's Hall museums to explore what syphilis is and its impact on the body with the help of human remain specialist cat Irving let's start at the beginning let's start right at the page one of this what is syphilis well syphilis is a bacterial infection so it's a bacteria called trepa Paladin uh which is a little spirro bacteria which means it's got spiral sket shape like a cork screw it looks really quite nice when you see it under an electron microscope but what it does is not very nice it could affect your actual bones too in some extreme cases it might get into the membranes that cover your bones so if we look this is this is a normal femur fairly bog standard um but then this is syphilitic periostitis so you can see that bone is really thick in comparison the surface is very very very uneven and this is likely to ache you know this is probably going to be quite painful um and certainly the earliest outbreak of syphilis uh in 1495 that we know of uh there are descriptions of men screaming through the night so it does react to infection in this way and what these bones here so that's the leg that would I do not fancy that how many people had it do we think well I mean it's always estimates when you're going back like that I mean in London they thought that one in five people had syphilis in uh the 18th century which is huge massive you know um and these were all levels of society if I'm an 18th century person or any person who's ever had this it's sexually transmitted I've had medallions what is that Spyro going to do to me well the place where it gets into your body uh so usually you need to have like a a mucous membrane or you know abrasion in the skin something like that but the spot where it's getting into your body uh you will end up with something called a Cher which is like a sort of a little kind of sore ulcer type thing and because this is predominantly spread sexually uh the Cher will usually appear you know in the usual kind of places youd associate that you know the penis the Velva vagina cervix the anus the mouth the hands maybe am I going to feel poorly when that's happening you're probably going to feel okay at that point you might feel a little bit you know sort of like I've got a sore on my face yeah yeah um but that's eventually going to go away you know it will pass week or two you'll be back to normal and you might I think that's it that's gone but few weeks after that goes away you get into secondary syphilis territory and it's got a lot of different ways this can manifest syphilis was known as the great imitator so you might just have sort of cold and flu like symptoms you know a fever rash was very very common uh particularly the palms of the hands SES of the feet I do not fancy that but these look if it could be even worse like is this syphilis as well this is tertiary syphilis oh was tertiary syphilis so you have your secondary syphilis it may have been fairly minor you might have got something worse like this this is something called gatus syphilis it gets around doesn't it yeah so a GMA is a sort of a little kind of like ball like structure it's qu it gets a name because it because of the texture you know yeah and they can happen anywhere in the body so here here the GMA has destroyed some of the forehead um and the uh the bone of your skull is basically like a sandwich so you've got two hard layers and a spongy layer in in between so what we see here is that the hard layer has been destroyed exposing that spongy bone in the middle but if we turn it around here it's actually made a hole into the skull what would what would that so that's what it looks like on the bone but for the person when they were alive what would that have looked like on their face well we've got this wax model so if we look at this here we can see the unevenness of the forehead that has been caused by that and that may eventually get to the point if if it enlarges that they start to ulcerate and you get ulceration of the forehead the eyes are really really unpleasant why does it do that why does it go for your eyes and and your nose that's the typical syph your nose falls off yeah well one of the plac plac that these gummas are attracted to other mucous membranes you did so yeah so here the Gummer around the orbit of the ey caused the technical term is it tropon where it's basically turned the eyelids inside out so it's not very nice some people had prosthetic noses right um you know you would wear a pair of glasses with a a no I would go for that I think but again that's going to be obvious so if you catch this thing and it seems like a a lot of people did it spread very very rapidly what treatment options were available apart from a prosthetic nose well well the treatment options were not very nice either so the main treatment at this point was Mercury and what does mercury do to the body well Mercury is very unpleasant uh it can cause a fever it can cause rashes exposure to Mercury can give you dementia it can make your teeth and hair fall out uh it can cause kidney failure so you know it's not something you really want either seeing those bones and organs laid out on a table like that it was really quite shocking it gave me such a jolt to remember that these were real people suffering from real diseases but sex in the Georgian world isn't just about Darkness sex was fun sometimes out in the open open and sometimes in more hidden spaces secret sexual subcultures including those in the queer Community change the landscape of sex in Georgian Society to find out more I'm meeting back up with Julie pakman what I'm finding quite surprising about sex in the Georgian period is it's actually it seems to be like quite out in the open there were secret societies there weren't there because it couldn't all be open and everyone having AIC in time tell me about some of the more hidden sexual subcultures one of the main ones was the Molly houses um and these were establishments where homosexual men could go to meet and have sex one of the main Molly houses we know about was Mother CL claps Molly house and we know about her because she came to trial and the Reformation um the society for the Reformation of manners was the problematic spy and they more or less tricked people they'd got witnesses to inag into the Molly houses to find out what was going on and then they'd have little mock ceremonies of either wedding um ceremonies or birthing ceremonies where they gave birth to uh wooden dolls so it was all this sort of like mock satirical attitude towards um the normal marriage and normal sex life so when you're reading about the mollies unfortunately the richest Source that's left to us are the court records from when people were arrested and prosecuted tried and sometimes exec uted but you do get like flashes into the culture and often with the names I find is really fascinating there was a princess saraphina where did that name come from this came from when they um started meeting in the Molly houses uh and what they wanted was female names to make it much more authentic for them as in in their relationships they often call themselves by the names of well-known cortis their real names didn't get as much publicity except as you said in the Childs so mother claps Molly house is the most well known but were there others and do you have any kind of a sense of how common they were or how many there were there was um flagellation societies the one that we know about is um a female flagellation society that um operated from German Street in London and we know about this from NED Ward um who was a journalist who used to go around London um talking to people and finding out tibits of sex and naughty things to write in his in in his journal in his newspaper the other um sort of societies so secret sex societies mainly all male was there a female equivalent with lesbian Molly houses or they wouldn't M called Molly houses or is there any evidence what were lesbians doing in the 18th century most of the women that um I've I've written about were actually um lesbians who went um and had sex within their own homes and it was easy to do that um because there was female friend friendships and you you you just used to share beds anyway and that was an acceptable um thing to do with your friends um and women of course were much less important there was no um threat to the status quo like there was with um male homosexuality these weren't the only hidden sex clubs in the rockus Georgian period I'm traveling to West Wickham and getting unique access to the site of a very special sex club whose members came from some of the most elite echelons of [Music] society the hellfire club not the one from stranger things no no no no the original hellfire club founded hundreds of years before television was even conceived what was it it was a secret society founded by and for the exclusive use of aristocratic men and it was said that at these club meetings they would indulge every wild sexual desire every debor inclination every Club needs a club house and this club was very underground quite literally underground and I am here at the Hellfire caves with exclusive access to show you around it's pretty scary but I am ready to do this if you are dashwood created this set of caves deep underground in his estate here at West Wickham each of these Chambers are connected through intricate passageways forget the boys of the Bullington club or the girls and boys of Soho House this club was rumored to have only the most socially Elite as its members including the Earl of Sandwich the Prince of Wales William Hogarth various MPS and apparently even the Founding Father of the United States and close friend of dashwoods Benjamin Franklin dashwood was famous for his libertine Lifestyle the original home of the hellfire club was in the grounds of a ruined ABY but it said that they reload located underground to these caves we don't know what they got up to there all the records of the meetings were destroyed by the club's official secretary Paul Whitehead three days before he died but looking around I don't know were they doing Tiddly Winks down here we we have absolutely no idea but it said that these little rooms off to the side in this large room which was the banqueting h this was where Gentlemen of the club would take their ladies Horus wpo said of the hellfire club that their practices were rigorously Pagan and that Venus and bacus were the deities to whom they prayed I just standing here honestly it does give you chills it does I don't know if it's sexy but it's got a lot of drama I'll give it that these came caves came from dashwood's Adventures in Europe where he visited caves and temples on his Grand Tour down these windy tunnels they would have parted with sex workers and potentially held huge orgies as we crossed over the river sticks which was named by dashwood himself it was named after the famous river in Greek mythology where it was said that the dead had to cross over to get to the under world we entered this sort of rather odd cavernous room this was said to be the inner Temple of the hellfire club with dashwood seeing himself as a kind of Hades figure again we don't know what they got up to in here but it said this is where they held their mock ceremonies their Satanic rituals their Mass orgies and deflowering of virgins and just about anything else that you could think of but we just don't know so what do you think I'm was this somewhere where upper class men enjoyed every whim every Indulgence behaving fantastically badly or maybe it was just a nice Folly to bring guests something to show off when friends came over hard to say but I think I know where I put my money these caves again show me that there were clear winners and losers of this age the wealthy Elite compared to the working classes whether it was any of this we'll never know but something we do know is as the Georgian period began to Wayne a new kind of Britain was forming one that was a little bit more stiff up a lip than stiff in the nether regions when the Victorian period started they were generally quite horrified at the sexual lenti and debauchery that had gone before and they really tried to model themselves against it and frame themselves as pillars of sexual morality at least that's what they like to tell each other but what could we learn from the Georgian period we like to think of them as almost entirely different species like we couldn't possibly do the things that they were doing then but I'm not so sure they were dealing with rapid rates of STI with issues around sex work with gay people being persecuted with reproductive issues with pornography is it okay is it not okay I don't know how far those conversations have actually evolved in the hundreds of years since then we're still dealing with all of those things just in slightly different ways and when it comes to who were winners and losers of the Georgian period Well the rich were winners rich and powerful people they got to have the kind of sex that they wanted to pretty much consequence free I'm not sure that has changed all that much either in the next episode we'll be going on a ride through booze drugs and rock and roll Stars find out who sent Byron a letter with pubic hair in it why and how JY became the establishment's biggest enemy which celeb ate a bank note on a slice of bread buttered of course and watched me try snu for the first time want to know even more about this titillating time period Then you can check out my podcast betwix the Sheep where we have a special four-part series all about the reality of the world of Bridgeton exploring sex drugs and rock and roll Georgian style and I don't stop with the Georgians oh no I also delve into medieval Judah and ancient sexuality and much much more listen to betwix the sheeps free wherever you get your podcasts I'll see you there