The whores and mores of Hanoverian London

A CHARACTER IN FRANÇOIS RABELAIS’S Pantagruel, when discussing the expense of rebuilding the city walls of sixteenth-century Paris, suggests a novel solution: why not take a cheap and widely available material, namely pudenda, “arranged in good architectural symmetry”, and construct the city boundaries from that? Judging by Julie Peakman’s book, much the same view prevailed in eighteenth-century London. If Renaissance Paris can provide enough material to satisfy the most prurient of readers, then Peakman’s account of Hanoverian London takes the Ann Summers, bunny-eared, crown. Sandwiched between the Glorious and French Revolutions, hers is a forensic tale of the sexual activities of Londoners as they enjoyed flagellation, mutual masturbation, “eyelid licking” (sic), full sex (as Alan Partridge would put it) and the pox with a coterie of handmaidens from lowly street-walkers to…