24. Sex in the City

Overview

This episode of The Rest is History features historian and author Hallie Rubenhold discussing sex, prostitution, gender, and class in Britain across the 18th and 19th centuries. The conversation begins with Rubenhold’s fiction and her attempt to tell an 18th-century courtesan’s story from a woman’s point of view, rather than through the male-authored erotic memoir tradition.

A central theme is the gap between what historical societies said about sex and what people actually did. Rubenhold argues that sex work was deeply woven into London’s social and geographic fabric, that women entered it through many routes, and that class shaped both sexual opportunity and sexual exploitation.

The discussion then broadens to changing ideas about women’s desire, Victorian respectability, homosexuality, adultery scandals, public mistresses, and famous courtesans. The episode repeatedly challenges simple stereotypes: Georgians were not uniformly licentious, Victorians were not uniformly repressed, and sexual behavior differed sharply across class, gender, and circumstance.

Section-by-section Summary

[00:09] Introducing Hallie Rubenhold and Women’s Sexual History

[Fact] The hosts introduce Hallie Rubenhold as a historian and author specializing in 18th- and 19th-century Britain, especially sexual dynamics. [Fact] Rubenhold explains that her novel drew on 18th- and early 19th-century literary tropes, including Tom Jones, Barry Lyndon, Fanny Hill, and Jane Austen, but told the story from a woman’s point of view. [Fact] She says she wanted to represent the experience of a woman who falls from respectable society and survives as a courtesan. [Inference] The opening frames the episode as an attempt to recover women’s experiences from a historical record often shaped by male voices.

[02:15] “Whores’ Memoirs” and the Problem of Voice

[Fact] Rubenhold describes “whores’ memoirs” as a genre of 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century confessionals, sometimes written by women involved in sex work and often voiced by men. [Fact] Harriet Wilson is presented as one of the few women who actually wrote her own memoirs, though Rubenhold notes she was still writing for a largely male readership. [Fact] Rubenhold says male-authored accounts often turned women’s sexual experiences into titillation or pornography. [Inference] Her work seeks to separate women’s lived realities from literary and commercial fantasies about prostitution.

[04:35] Sources for the History of Sex

[Fact] The hosts contrast ancient history’s scarcity of evidence with modern history’s abundance of sex surveys and records. [Fact] Rubenhold says she relies on diaries, memoirs, letters, and other deeply personal sources to study sex historically. [Fact] She argues that sex offers an unusually direct way into people’s inner lives, beliefs, fears, bodies, and relationships. [Fact] When asked about dishonesty in sexual self-reporting, she says sex can be performance and that sources must be judged by context. [Inference] The episode treats sexual history as both intimate evidence and unstable evidence that requires careful interpretation.

[07:43] London’s Sexual Geography

[Fact] The conversation turns to London’s buried rivers and historic red-light districts, including the Strand, Holywell Street, and Covent Garden. [Fact] Rubenhold says the Strand had long been associated with street walkers from the 18th century into the early 20th century. [Fact] She explains that sex work moved with London’s development, from Covent Garden toward areas such as Piccadilly, St James’s, and later middle-class districts like Fitzrovia. [Fact] She says sex work was integrated into London’s social fabric, from high-class brothels and mistresses near aristocratic townhouses to middle-class sex workers serving tradesmen. [Inference] The geography of prostitution becomes a way to map class, money, urban growth, and everyday life in London.

[12:14] Why Women Entered Sex Work

[Fact] Rubenhold says women entered sex work both voluntarily and because of circumstance, poverty, coercion, or lack of alternatives. [Fact] She argues that moralizing literature claimed a fallen woman was ruined, but social reality was more complex. [Fact] She gives the example of lower-middle-class families with too many daughters and insufficient dowries, where some women might become mistresses or concubines. [Fact] She also describes poor women, servant girls, and girls raised in brothels as different routes into the sex trade. [Inference] Sex work is presented not as one fixed profession but as a spectrum shaped by class, family economics, and gendered dependency.

[15:04] Pregnancy, Abortion, and Occupational Risk

[Fact] A listener asks whether pregnancy ended a sex worker’s career. [Fact] Rubenhold says pregnancy was an occupational hazard in a period without effective birth control. [Fact] She discusses early abortion before “quickening,” explaining that it was not always understood as ending a child’s life at that stage. [Fact] She mentions remedies such as Hooper’s Female Pills and abortifacient herbs, including pennyroyal, and says such remedies were widely available. [Fact] She recounts an anecdote that abortifacient herbs in Regent’s Park were quickly stripped after the park opened. [Inference] The discussion suggests that reproductive control was common, practical, and often hidden behind euphemism.

[18:41] From “Randy Restorationers” to “Sexually Neurotic Victorians”

[Fact] After the break, the hosts ask what changed between the Restoration, Georgian, and Victorian eras in attitudes toward sex and gender. [Fact] Rubenhold challenges the premise by distinguishing between the literate classes who wrote about sex and the majority whose lives were less documented. [Fact] She says working-class sexual behavior did not change as radically as elite or middle-class ideology, with sex outside marriage, informal unions, abandonment, and re-partnering continuing. [Fact] She identifies 18th-century ideas of love, compatibility, nature, and companionate sex as part of the changing intellectual landscape. [Inference] The episode resists a single linear story of sexual repression replacing sexual freedom.

[23:31] Women’s Desire and Victorian Ideals

[Fact] Rubenhold says earlier beliefs often portrayed women as lustful and insatiable once they lost virginity. [Fact] The hosts contrast this with Victorian literary ideals of women as morally superior, asexual, or “fallen angels.” [Fact] Rubenhold emphasizes that this Victorian ideal was especially upper-middle- and middle-class. [Fact] Dickens is discussed as an example of complicated attitudes toward fallen women, including his involvement with Urania House and his own mistress. [Inference] The shift in ideas about women’s sexuality was uneven and filtered through class, literature, and male anxieties.

[25:30] Class, Slumming, and the Sexual Use of Poor Women

[Fact] The hosts ask whether wealthy men visiting the East End were attracted by the poverty or class status of women there. [Fact] Rubenhold connects this to “slumming,” where wealthy people from the West End went to the East End as tourists to experience pubs, sex, and working-class life. [Fact] She says sex in Britain was deeply bound up with class. [Fact] She argues that working-class women were often treated as disposable, sexualized, and available for use by men of higher status. [Fact] She cites My Secret Life as an example of a male account centered on repeated sexual encounters with lower-status women. [Inference] The conversation presents sexual freedom for elite men as often depending on the exploitation of poorer women.

[28:03] Sexual Practices, Homosexuality, and Moral Panics

[Fact] Asked whether sexual practices changed over time, Rubenhold says people have always liked sex but acknowledges changing fashions and subcultures. [Fact] She notes that the discussion has mostly concerned heterosexual sex and says there was also a gay sexual subculture. [Fact] She says lesbianism was viewed differently, including through ideas that women could become sexualized through sex with women before sex with men. [Fact] On moral panics, she identifies homosexuality around 1800 and “criminal conversation,” or adultery, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. [Fact] She says adultery trials drew crowds and buyers for published transcripts. [Inference] Public outrage over sex often doubled as public entertainment.

[30:51] Byron, Sodomy Laws, and Sex Abroad

[Fact] The hosts discuss men being executed for sodomy in early 19th-century Britain. [Fact] Byron is discussed in relation to the theory that he went abroad partly because sex with boys in England risked a capital charge. [Fact] Rubenhold links travel to libertinism and the tradition of elite men going abroad to “sow wild oats.” [Fact] She says grand tourists were drawn to places such as Venice and could leave illegitimate children behind without responsibility. [Fact] The hosts mention Boswell seeking Rousseau’s approval for having many wives and abandoning children, which Rousseau rejects. [Inference] Foreign travel is portrayed as a zone where elite men imagined fewer social and legal constraints.

[33:17] How 18th-Century People Might View the 21st Century

[Fact] Rubenhold says people from the 18th century would likely be horrified by modern women’s sexual freedom. [Fact] She says 18th-century men might also be thrilled because they would see less responsibility attached to women’s sexuality. [Inference] Her answer highlights a double standard: condemnation of sexually free women could coexist with male excitement about access to them.

[34:01] Victorian Taboos and Middle-Class Respectability

[Fact] A listener asks whether there really was a Victorian taboo about sex, when it developed, and among whom. [Fact] Rubenhold says the answer is complex and cautions against oversimplifying both Georgians and Victorians. [Fact] She links changing attitudes to the growth of the literate, aspirational middle class and its pursuit of respectability. [Fact] She says Victorians were not simply repressed, just as Georgians were not simply licentious. [Inference] Respectability appears less as universal morality than as a class-coded public performance.

[36:23] Men’s Knowledge, Women’s Ignorance, and the Fallen Woman

[Fact] The hosts ask about the Marquis de Sade, Tennyson, Henry James, and whether Victorian men talked about sex. [Fact] Rubenhold says men did talk about sex, though not all recorded those conversations. [Fact] She agrees that middle-class men were generally expected to know about sex while women were not. [Fact] She says Georgian unmarried women had to know enough to manage courtship but not so much that they appeared sexually knowledgeable. [Fact] She says Victorian women who had sex outside marriage were, in principle, considered ruined or fallen, though real practice contained contradictions. [Inference] Sexual ignorance was part of a feminine ideal, but women still had to navigate courtship and reputation with practical knowledge.

[38:48] Mistresses, Public Figures, and Double Standards

[Fact] A listener asks when public figures stopped having widely acknowledged mistresses. [Fact] Rubenhold says mistresses were acceptable in the Georgian period and that Victorian men could still be seen with famous courtesans before marriage. [Fact] She says married men needed at least a veneer of respectability, even if they kept mistresses privately. [Fact] The hosts compare this with Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, and Rubenhold says such examples show how much of the sexual double standard remains. [Fact] She says Johnson living with a partner and having children in Number 10 would have been unimaginable in many earlier periods. [Inference] Modern tolerance of male sexual irregularity is presented as both a change from older norms and a survival of older gendered privilege.

[41:40] Celebrity Courtesans and Sexual Status Symbols

[Fact] The hosts ask about “big name courtesans” and whether they were celebrities. [Fact] Rubenhold says famous courtesans created allure through marketing, fashionability, and association with powerful men. [Fact] She cites Kitty Fisher and stories about extravagant behavior, such as eating a banknote between buttered bread and champagne drunk from a slipper. [Fact] She says courtesans could function as male status symbols, displaying a man’s wealth and power. [Fact] She adds that some courtesans used this world to gain agency and choose keepers, while others ended in poverty. [Inference] The courtesan’s fame could create leverage, but it did not remove the economic danger of the sex trade.

Podcast Commentary / Summary

The episode’s strength is its refusal to flatten the sexual history of Britain into familiar clichés about liberated Georgians and repressed Victorians. Rubenhold repeatedly brings the discussion back to evidence, class, geography, and the difference between moral rhetoric and lived behavior.

Its most valuable thread is the emphasis on women’s experience: how sex work might be coercive, strategic, inherited, economically necessary, or temporarily empowering, depending on circumstance. The discussion also shows how much historical evidence about sex is filtered through male fantasy, legal record, literary convention, or scandal.

[Inference] The episode is best suited to listeners interested in social history, gender history, urban history, and the hidden structures behind public morality. [Inference] Its limitation is that the broad topic forces some major subjects, including homosexuality, contraception, and Victorian taboo, into brief sketches rather than full treatments.