PROSTITUTION

The Eighteenth Century

Dan Cruickshank's book The Secret History of Georgian London: How The Wages of Sin Shaped The Capital Random House (2009) argues that vice was one of the motors that drove the construction of 18^thC London, as well as informing much of its art and literature, e.g. Defoe's Moll Flanders (1722), Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728), Hogarth's The Harlot s Progress (1731), and Joshua Reynolds's c.1759 portrait of Kitty Fisher.

See Also: O KELLY S WONDER

A Georgian Misapprehension

In 1907 the Russian Communists held the 5^th Congress of the Russian Social Democrat Labour Party in London. In Limehouse Maxim Litvinov (1876-1951) prevented Stalin from being beaten up by dockers, the future dictator had mistaken a docker's wife for a lady of the night. While dismissed Litvinov as the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs in 1939, he did not have him executed. The dictator had not forgotten the incident.

Harris's List

Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies (1757-95) annually produced directory of the prostitutes who plied their trade in and around Covent Garden. The publication derived its name from Jack Harris, the head waiter at The Shakespeare's Head in Covent Garden. His activities included acting as a pimp.

Grubby Love

Prostitution in the City of London has left a legacy in street names. Until the 1930s Lovat Lane was known as Love Lane. Another Love Lane survives to the east of The Guildhall.

Grub Street had been known formerly as Gropecunt Lane. Its name was changed to Milton Street.

Location: Lovat Lane, EC3R 8BU (orange, pink)

Love Lane, EC2V 7JN (blue, purple)

Milton Street, EC2Y 9BH (blue, brown)

See Also: STREETS, SPECIALISED

Janie Jones

In 1971 the News of The World newspaper ran a story that the singer Janie Jones had used prostitutes to try to aid her career. The scandal damaged the career of the entertainer Kenny Lynch (1938-2019). Three years later she was gaoled for seven years for controlling prostitutes and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Location: Campden Hill Road, W8 7AR (blue, red)

'Mariella Novotny'

Stella Capes (1942-1983) was raised in Sheffield by a single mother. She grew up to be an attractive adolescent. In her teens she moved to London, using the name Mariella Novotny claimed to have come from an influential Czech family (it is possible that she may have been the daughter of Czech airman). She worked both as a topless dancer at The Windmill Theatre in Soho and as a hat-check girl The Pigalle Club in Piccadilly. She went on to work in The Black Sheep nightclub, which was run by Horace Hod Dibben. Her short-sightedness led to her spilling some goulash that she was trying to serve. She was sacked. Dibben saw her crying and took pity on her. They married at the start 1960. She was aged eighteen and he was 56-years-old.

Her new husband also worked as an antiques dealer who supplied goods to wealthy Americans. Under his tutelage she became able to talk about art and antiques. She took to using a Faberg lorgnette to overcome her short-sightedness. She developed a haughty manner and developed intellectual pretensions, claiming that Bertrand Russell was among her bedtime reading.

Hod was also a sexual decadent. With his encouragement, she took to working as a high-end call girl, delivering extreme sadistic sex. In December 1960, together with Suzy Chang, she may have been part of a honeytrap that was intended to entrap John F. Kennedy, who was then the President-Elect of the United States. It was thought to have been orchestrated by Harry Alan Tower, a British film producer who was an alleged Communist agent. The Federal Bureau of Investigation became aware of the matter, dubbing it The Bow-tie Case . Towers fled to the Soviet Union. Mariella was retained in the States as a key witness. However, she felt able to speak freely about the matter. It was soon concluded that the matter should be buried and the easiest way to do this was to allow her to leave the country. The Central Intelligence Agency paid for her to sail back to Britain onboard the liner the Queen Mary.¹

Hod was friendly with Lord Astor and the fashionable osteopath Stephen Ward, both men being part of an orgy circuit that included politicians, television personalities and foreign diplomats. Ward fostered his social contacts by cultivating a number of young, attractive women. Mariella was more sophisticated and self-assured than most of them. He became fascinated by her. Through him she met John Profumo and the Soviet Naval Attach Eugene Ivanov, who were to be central to the Profumo Scandal. She did not take to either man.

In December 1961 Mariella hosted the Man in the Mask orgy at her Hyde Park Square flat. Upon arrival, the guests were greeted by Ward wearing just a sock. They were then invited to whip a man was strapped between pillars. He was dressed just in a masonic apron and a mask. Prior to the dinner being served, he was released but ordered to remain behind the table. She was never to reveal the man s identity. The orgy featured in the investigations of the Profumo Scandal by the senior judge Alfred Denning. Mariella was profoundly miffed at not being mentioned in the report that he wrote.

Mariella encountered the safecracker, Eddie Chapman. She was struck by his honesty about his dishonesty. Together with Hod , they formed a m nage trois. For a period the trio lived in Rome. In 1964 she gave birth to Chapman's child.

In the late 1960s Mariella was living in West London. She developed an interest in social issues, such as prison reform. She started writing novels, the first of which was King's Road (1971). It was tawdry and devoid of literary merit. She claimed not drink or use street drugs, however, she acquired a taste for prescription drugs. She was interviewed by newspapers, such as The Daily Mirror and the News of The World. However, journalists soon came to appreciate that she was a self-publicist of limited abilities.

In the mid-1970s acted as agent provocateur that sought to entrap a Caribbean prime minister in Brown's Hotel. Not long after she was working as a stripper In Soho. In a nod to Punk one of her costumes included a spiky punk wig and a swastika.

In 1983 she was found dead in her flat. Her face was resting in a bowl of milk pudding that she had made for herself. Her death was officially attributed to an overdose of Temazepam. A friend of her commented that someone who had been using the drug was unlikely to die of it

See Also: SOHO The Windmill Theatre

¹. Javias Mar referred to the case in his novel Thus Bad Begins (2016).

Cynthia Payne

In her late teens Cynthia Payne (1932-2015) had a child. She was not married. In her late twenties she opted to earn money by becoming a prostitute's maid and then a prostitute. She found herself drawn towards hosting sex parties. These were attended by older men. In 1978 the police raided the fastidiously-kept home in Streatham that she shared with Squadron Leader Robert Mitch Smith (d.1981). It was learnt that she had been using Luncheon Vouchers vouchers as tokens with which her guests could pay for sexual services. Pensioners received a discount. There were anti-macassars on the chintzy chairs. The nation enjoyed the absurdity and the homeliness of it. In the media she became known as Madame Cyn . She proved to be a gifted self-publicist

Following her acquittal she was interview on the television show Newsnight about why she had refused the names of any of her clients during the trial. She replied that Well, me morals may be low, but me ethics is high.

In 1980 Payne was convicted of running a disorderly house. She was given an eighteen-month-long prison sentence. Upon appeal, the term was reduced to six. She spent four months in Holloway Prison. A biography of her inspired the movies Personal Services (1987), which was directed by Terry Jones, and Wish You Were Here (1987).

Following the end of filming of Personal Services, Payne hosted a celebratory party. The police raided the house and charged her with controlling prostitutes. In 1987, following a thirteen-day-long trial, a jury found her not guilty. When the verdict was declared the people in the courtroom burst into spontaneous applause. Subsequently, she sought to reform the U.K. s sex laws. She stood in a number of Parliamentary elections as an independent candidate.

Location: 32 Ambleside Avenue, Streatham, SW16 1QP. There was a convent next door.

The Rector of Stiffkey

Harold Davidson was appointed as a curate of St Martin-in-the-Fields in 1905. The following year he was made the Rector of Stiffkey in Norfolk. However, he made frequent trips back to London, where he spent much of his time associating with prostitutes. Eventually, his conduct brought him to the notice of the church authorities. In 1932, he was tried by the Norwich Consistory Court, which had been convened in London. Five charges had been brought against him. He was convicted and defrocked. In order to earn a living he chose to exploit his notoriety. In 1937, while he was working in Skegness Amusement Park, he was mauled by a lion. He died in hospital while being treated for his injuries.

Location: 6 St Martin's Place, WC2N 4JH (red, turquoise)

Soho Prostitution

During the first half of the 20^thC Gerrard Street and Lisle Street were centres of prostitution. During one period in the 20^thC Soho's street prostitutes could be identified by the white gloves that they wore.

The Messina brothers arrived in England in the 1930s from Malta by way of Italy and Egypt. The sibs established a thriving vice business in Soho. Their operations suffered somewhat during the Second World War when there was greater promiscuity.¹ In 1950 the brothers were the subject of a sustained hostile media campaign by the journalist Duncan Webb, who wrote for The People newspaper. The police, now the subject of public interest, pursued the family relentlessly.

In the Messinas wake two other Maltese - Bernie Silver (1922-2002) and Big Frank Mifsud (1926-2017) - established themselves as Soho's vice kings. For many years they were able to insulate themselves from prosecution by systematically corrupting police officers. In the 1970s, with the end of organised police corruption, the criminal control of prostitution in Soho was broken for a while.

In the 1990s Albanian gangs became dominant.

Location: Gerrard Street, W1D 5PR (blue, yellow)

Lisle Street, WC2H 7BA (red, pink)

See Also: SOHO

¹. The hippies of the late 1960s were largely people who had been born during the years that had followed the Second World War. Therefore, it is probable that their parents were more likely to have engaged in sexual promiscuity than either the generation before them or the one after them. The fruit may not have been falling so far from the tree as was assumed by many at the time.

Street Prostitution

Pip Granger spent much of her childhood in Soho, where her father sold erotic literature. She was of the view that one of the side-effects of the Street Offences Act of 1959 was that children no longer felt as safe playing on the streets of Soho as they had before the measure's passage. This was because the girls were no longer watching out for them.

What's In A Name?

The Conservative politician the 2^nd Earl Jellicoe (1918-2007) rose to be the Lord Privy Seal and the Leader of the Lords. He used prostitutes that were supplied to him by the madame Norma Levy. During the Lambton Scandal investigation, one of them gave the police Jellicoe s name. When entertaining sex workers at his Onslow Square flat, he had been careful to use a false name. However, his real name had been on the building's entrance. His career was ended. He had been a politician of considerably more substance than Lord Lambton had been.

Location: Flat 7, 97 Onslow Square, SW7 3LT (red, black)

David Backhouse 2024