The Whores of Georgian London

City of whores. City of money.

Built with the commerce of minds and bodies.

Majestic facades created

By ruthless speculators and landlords

Ingenious in avarice and plunder.


At his easel in an upstairs room,

Hogarth raises his brush in salute

To poor Moll, the hapless country girl

Swallowed and spat out by wicked London,

With its bawds and libertines,

Venal clergy, quack doctors,

Crooked judges and brutal gaols.


As soon as the streetlamps are lit

And cast their glow in the thickening gloom,

Girls made up in borrowed dresses

Swarm out to hawk their wares,

Accosting every man who passes.

The Temple of Aurora is open for business,

Supplying prepubescent girls

To the rich and depraved.

In the Molly House a fiddle strikes up

As the men come together and dance.


A masquerade at Carlisle House:

Crystal chandeliers and silk sofas;

Chinoiserie reflected in grand mirrors

To the sounds of opera and concerto.

In the evergreen grotto, maskers

Throng,squeezing through endless

Rooms, each more baroque than the last,

Bucks,bloods and maccaronies

With dominoed courtesans,

Duchesses and shopgirls alike,

Mixing with promiscuous incognito.


Each night,after the “Beggar’s Opera”,

Audiences surge out of the theatre

Into the Strand and Covent Garden,

Among the very thieves and queans

They have just enjoyed onstage.

Miss Lavinia Fenton,lady of the streets,

Performs the role of Polly Peachum,

Now famous,wealthy and courted

By her greatest fan, the Duke of Bolton.


From yellow carriages sporting ladies

Alight at Joshua Reynold’s door,

Models for portraits and allegories;

In bagnios,taverns and brothels

He seeks out faces and forms

Worthy of Hellenic goddesses;

Beguiled and half in love

He sits across from them,

Quietly directing their poses,

Co-conspirators,sharing a joke.