Swell's Night Guide through the Metropolis (1841)

[tantraman]

Gents,

Reading the Metro on the Tube on Friday gone, I loved learning about the legendary Swell's Night Guide through the Metropolis ...

Hidden Image/Members Only

... which was effectively UKP's London board from 178 years ago! I wonder if our WG reviews will be quoted in whatever media there might be in another century-and-a-half or so.

[peter purves]

There is nothing new under the sun ey

This book would probably make interesting reading. Its poetry is almost as good as your own TM 

"No-one will regret passing an hour in her company, and drinking deep at that mystic fountain of human pleasure"

I also observe that the book also covers the WGs sexual exploitation also

[Blackpool Rock]

There is nothing new under the sun ey

This book would probably make interesting reading. Its poetry is almost as good as your own TM 

"No-one will regret passing an hour in her company, and drinking deep at that mystic fountain of human pleasure"

I also observe that the book also covers the WGs sexual exploitation also

Mmmm that exert sounds more like a fluffy AW "Field report" rather than a UKP review, only needs "Treat her well" to finish it off   

[Littlefoot]

Mmmm that exert sounds more like a fluffy AW "Field report" rather than a UKP review, only needs "Treat her well" to finish it off   

"Another less flatteringly referred to as 'fair, fat and 50"

That sounds more like a UKP review.   

[tantraman]

Out of interest, Googling uncovers a veritable collection of Swell's Night Guides at the esteemed British Library no less ...

External Link/Members Only

... from which I lift some blurb ...

Swell’s Night Guides were guidebooks for the fashionable man-about-town, and probably published in the 1830s and early 1840s. The books described the clubs, pubs and bars in which prostitutes were to be found. One lists theatres, noting their advantages and drawbacks for a man of pleasure: those in which the doormen would let men behind the scenes to meet the dancing-girls, those that had boxes with locks on the doors, and so on.

There were also addresses for ‘Introducing Houses’, where women waited for clients. Some were just the upstairs rooms of pubs, while others masqueraded as respectable businesses, with a brass plaque – the sign of the professional middle-classes – on the doors claiming the house was a doctor’s, or a milliner’s, or a dressmaker’s. The Guides were horrifyingly blunt about what was to be found there, and about the ways in which men regarded the women. At Mme Matileau’s establishments, in Soho and Kensington,

    "nothing is allowed to get stale ... you may have your meat dressed to your own liking ... her flock is in prime condition, and always ready for sticking; when any of them are fried, they are turned out to grass ... consequently the rot, bots, glanders, and other diseases incidental to cattle, are not generally known here."

The publisher’s address is in the heart of the pornography-printing district, and W West, the printer of one (one other has a fake name, and the third is missing that page), was long-established there. The books are extraordinarily rare today – there appear to be just five surviving in the world.

The guides followed a tradition of such books. In the early 18th century Ned Ward’s The Secret History of London Clubs contained information on a ‘Bawds’ Initiating Club’, and the notorious Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies was published for at least three decades between 1764 and 1788, giving names, addresses, prices and descriptions of prostitutes. In the more decorous 19th century, this type of book became rarer – rarer, but it never quite vanished.

... never quite vanished indeed, and here we are!

[Colston36]

The age of hypocrisy (and syphilis). Harris's Guide to Covent Garden Ladies was republished a few years ago, edited by a very good historical writer, Hallie Rubenhold. I was fascinated to see that Newman Street where my offices were then was full of whores. I felt retrospectively in good company.

[Vivago]

Interesting post. Never heard of this one before. I'm quite interested in Victorian erotica. Has anyone else plowed through the 2000+ plus pages of My Secret Life by Walter which is the, often turgid, sometimes highly erotic memoirs of a serial Victorian punter from his earliest memories of having his cock played with as a infant by young female servants to his latter punts as an old man with rapidly fading libido.

Anyone with 6 months or so to spare on reading it may download a copy at:

External Link/Members Only

[tantraman]

Anyone with 6 months or so to spare on reading it may download a copy at:

External Link/Members Only

Thanks, Vivago ... downloaded!

That Walter fellow seems to have been one helluva punter!

[Colston36]

Interesting post. Never heard of this one before. I'm quite interested in Victorian erotica. Has anyone else plowed through the 2000+ plus pages of My Secret Life by Walter which is the, often turgid, sometimes highly erotic memoirs of a serial Victorian punter from his earliest memories of having his cock played with as a infant by young female servants to his latter punts as an old man with rapidly fading libido.

Anyone with 6 months or so to spare on reading it may download a copy at:

External Link/Members Only

I read a lot of that years ago. Has anyone read The Memoirs of Casanova? Very well written, but not that explicit.

[Littlefoot]

Interesting post. Never heard of this one before. I'm quite interested in Victorian erotica. Has anyone else plowed through the 2000+ plus pages of My Secret Life by Walter which is the, often turgid, sometimes highly erotic memoirs of a serial Victorian punter from his earliest memories of having his cock played with as a infant by young female servants to his latter punts as an old man with rapidly fading libido.

Anyone with 6 months or so to spare on reading it may download a copy at:

External Link/Members Only

Just started to read it, I think I might enjoy it. Cheers