Poultry and Prostitutions: Winchester Geese, Religion and Sex Work

The demonisation of sex work is not a modern phenomenon. It was in 1310 (in Britain) that Edward II outlawed brothels - which obviously did not end sex work, it only made it exponentially more dangerous. For women in the Middle Ages, financial freedom was near impossible to gain, so out of desperation, sex work became a clear avenue through which women were able to support themselves. Clearly, this isn’t an idea that I have miraculously spawned and is instead, a widely known fact, but what I think is both interesting and widely unknown was the role of the church in the British sex industry.

Since at least the Middle Ages, bishops have been licensed to employ prostitutes and manage brothels. An infamous example of this is the ‘Winchester Geese’ of Southwark, employed in the red light district by the Bishop of Winchester. If being employed by what was essentially a Bishop pimp wasn’t bad enough, the women were refused a Christian burial due to the shame of their profession. The Winchester Geese’s bodies were famously desecrated as the Bishops buried them in unconsecrated grounds on which tenement slums were built. The graveyard was first referenced in John Stow’s 1589 survey of London which stated; ‘so long as they continued that sinful life, and were excluded from Christian burial’. This highlights the double standard between the treatment of prostitutes and their clientele due to the shame associated with female sexuality. This double standard is further illustrated in the Report of the Royal Commission upon the Administration and Operation of Contagious Diseases Act of 1871 (a mouthful of a name for what is basically advocacy against the safety of sex workers); ‘With the one sex the offence is committed as a matter of a gain; with the other, it is an irregular indulgence of a natural impulse’. Stating that prostitution is necessary for male impluses but the second a woman becomes a prostitute she should be shunned. Definitely not a paradoxical idea at all…

The church continued to be deeply involved in the sex trade up until at least the 1770s and was epitomised during the lifetime of Emily Warren. As a young girl Warren was forced to wander the streets as a beggar with her blind father, until the age of 8 when she was then sold by her mother to a fancy brothel. Charlotte Hayes (more on her later) accepted Warren into her ‘nunnery’ (sneaky name for a brothel) where she was promised an education - the education ended up training to become a courtesan. Warren ended up working in a brothel in London only reaching fame when painted by Reynolds, most famously in Thaïs. Reynolds in a move of clearly hilarious irony depicts her burning down the Temple of Chastity, forever cementing Warren as a courtesan and sex worker. Despite a harsh upbringing, Warren remains an anomaly given her near escape from the straits of sex work. She and Robert Potts of the East India Company married and left for India to start a new life together away from the prying eyes of English high society. However, because a happy ending would be too easy, Warren died on the journey to Calcutta aged approximately 21. Despite the depressing end to her life, in death, Warren received respect in the form of a £4,000 mausoleum highlighting an additional class element in the issue of prostitution.

Now what did any of that have to do with the tie between religion and prostitution? This is where Charlotte Hayes becomes important. In 1779 the book ‘Nocturnal Revels’ was released, written by a ‘monk of the Order of St Francis’ which was about ‘the history of King's-Place and other modern nunneries’. The ‘Order of St Francis’ was a reference to the ‘Order of the Monks of Medmenham’ also known as the ‘Hellfire Club’ founded by Francis Dashwood. The club was essentially a group of young and influential men who held meetings in Medmenham Abbey where they performed and I quote ‘obscene parodies of religious rites’ - the average Friday night for me of course. Additionally, the phrase ‘modern nunneries’ refers to high-class brothels such as Charlotte Hayes’ Seraglio and the book even goes into detail revealing the ways Hayes would trick young women into joining the brothel - such as Emily Warren. I would argue that the idea of a 'nunnery' being linked to sex work is the presentation of the courtesans as virgins as the word 'nunnery' demands respect. Once again the paradox of purity culture tied to the church and its involvement with the sex trade becomes apparent. The book's use of the word 'nunnery' suggests a more surface-level relationship between the church and prostitution, yet still really emphasises the idea that it was a part of public consciousness. But now instead of employment by the church, it was used as a sort of euphemism to describe a range of ‘shameful’ sexual activities from prostitution to whatever the Hellfire Club was doing…

Basically, what I’m trying to demonstrate is the double standard that the church afforded within sex work. With the Winchester Geese, the prostitutes were shunned and treated abysmally in death - when comparatively, the Bishops lost no gravitas and nor did the Johns who visited said prostitutes. Furthermore, religious semantics being tied to sex work in the late 18th Century ensured that women could be tricked into joining the infamous London brothels. Such the link between the church and prostitution indicates the dichotomous attitude towards sex work and the double standard that it has exacerbated across history.

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Bibliography

Cruickshank, D., (2010). The Secret History of Georgian London: How the Wages of Sin Shaped the Capital. Random House.

Goadby, M., (1779) Nocturnal Revels: Or, the History of King's-Place, and Other Modern Nunneries, Volumes I and II. London. Reprinted BiblioBazaar (2010).

Johnson, B., Historic UK. (n.d.) Cross Bones Graveyard, London - Burial ground of the Winchester Geese.

Karras, R. M., (1998) Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England

Report of the Royal Commission upon the Administration and Operation of Contagious Diseases Act (London, 1871)

Turner, F., Constable, J., (2019) Frank Turner’s Tales From No Man’s Land: The Graveyard of the Outcast Dead