A scene from 18th century painter and social commentator William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress.
White’s The Gentlemen’s Club, White’s The Brothel – don’t get the two confused…
For particular Georgian or Regency gentleman of a certain class, one or the other of the two venues were regular haunts.
The first White’s still exists today and still exclusively an all male domain although interestingly it owes its name to a woman.
Originally sited in Mayfair in the late 17th century, the venue’s original name was Mrs White’s Chocolate House and it was established by an entrepreneurial Italian by the name of Francesco Bianco (I haven’t found a record whether the Anglicised Mrs Bianco was pleased with the tribute, but what woman doesn’t love chocolate?)
Much like the mutitasking shops of today, White’s as it became known, was also Georgian-era Ticketek outlet, selling tickets to shows at King’s Theatre and Royal Drury Lane Theatre.
Not long after, the clientele became more exclusive and more interested in gambling than the cacao bean. Author and commentator Jonathan Swift referred to White’s as the “bane of half the English nobility.”
In 1778 White’s moved St James’s Street, just down the road from another gentlemen’s club – Brooks’s and not long after the two clubs differentiated themselves politically – the gents from White’s were likely to be Tories while the gents from Brooks were typically Whigs.
But these clubs were more than just a boys’ night out at the pub, they were serious networking venues. Deals were done, potential business partners assessed, political careers and opinions were canvassed over dinners, drinks, cigars and cards.
From Moonstone Conspiracy:
After several minutes of determined walking, she arrived at the gentlemen’s club. The footman who opened the door stared at her, blinking several times as if he had never before seen a woman.
In these hallowed halls Abigail supposed he hadn’t. That made her all the more determined to hold her ground.
Any comment the footman was of a mind to make was quashed by the butler who, after taking in her appearance, decided that she was mistress to one of the members
“I’m afraid you’ve arrived at the wrong destination my Lady,” he said politely but steering her purposefully away from windows. “The modiste is at number fifty-eight.”
From her ivory carved case, she handed him a calling card, her title engraved in copper plate script on heavy expensive card.
“I was informed by Sir Phillip Glynde’s secretary that he would be here. Be a good man and hand him this card and tell him that—”
While the well-to-do gentlemen and aristocrat did business in salubrious surroundings, around them less fortunate people were doing another form of business. Prostitution was rife and it has been estimated that during the 18th century one in five women in London were ‘on the game’ in some form or another.
Toward the end of that century and through out the 19th century social reformers were beginning to make headway in addressing the issues of homelessness, disease, alcoholism and human trafficking in the form of forced or coerced prostitution of women and children.
Fiction set in these eras often romanticises the sex trade, putting a soft focus lens of the glamorous life of a courtesan, one of those ‘lucky few’ who could obtain a wealthy patron, rather than the grimy disease-ridden reality of the threepenny bit street walker.
Only slightly better off were the girls who found work in brothels, but in reality, the lot of the brothel worker was more like this:
Charlotte Hayes ran one such brothel or ‘nunnery’ in the parlance of the day, keeping a carriage and liveried servants for her ladies of the night, who were taught manners and graces.
One of these so-called ‘nuns’ was Emily Warren, an ‘exquisite beauty’ who became muse to the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds.
The Georgian memoirist William Hickey describes sleeping with her; ‘Never did I behold so perfect a beauty. I passed a night that many would have given thousands to do.
‘I however, that night, experienced the truth – that she was cold as ice, seemingly totally devoid of feeling. I rose convinced that she had no passion for the male sex.’
Not exactly romantic…
In terms of audacious flamboyance and hedonism is the other ‘White’s’, also known as the White House Brothel, located in Soho, a once thriving district that was increasingly becoming down-at-heel.
In 1778 Thomas Hooper had transformed The Manor House (the name by which it is known today) in a ‘hotel’ that put a thin veil on respectability over its operation as a themed brothel.
Henry Mayhew called the White House a “notorious place of ill-fame” and wrote:
Some of the apartments, it is said, were furnished in a style of costly luxury; while others were fitted up with springs, traps, and other contrivances, so as to present no appearance other than that of an ordinary room, until the machinery was set in motion. In one room, into which some wretched girl might be introduced, on her drawing a curtain as she would be desired, a skeleton, grinning horribly, was precipitated forward, and caught the terrified creature in his, to all appearance, bony arms. In another chamber the lights grew dim, and then seemed gradually to go out. In a little time some candles, apparently self-ignited, revealed to a horror stricken woman, a black coffin, on the lid of which might be seen, in brass letters, ANNE, or whatever name it had been ascertained the poor wretch was known by. A sofa, in another part of the mansion was made to descend into some place of utter darkness; or, it was alleged, into a room in which was a store of soot or ashes.
A impressive spectacular to be sure and yet, in some respects there was little difference between the ‘devoid of feeling’ Emily Warren with her satins and silks and the ‘poor wretch’ known as Anne.
From Moonstone Conspiracy:
Abigail disembarked and told the driver to wait. She dropped the brass knocker with three hard raps and waited on the stoop.
Over the street traffic she could hear snatches of a Scottish brogue booming.
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
Abigail glanced at the big man, dressed head to toe in black, standing on a wooden crate with a Bible in his hand. He had attracted the crowd of about a dozen. A couple of people listened intently others merely spared him a glance as they hurried by.
The notorious White’s House was in view from across the corner of the square and well-to-do young men, in high spirits from having every vice indulged, drunkenly mocked the Scot, who studiously ignored them – before the hecklers became distracted by leering and cat calling to the young maids who scurried about their errands with their eyes fixed to the ground.
