The Naked Anthropologist
@NakedAnthropolo
Laura Agustín, author of Sex at the Margins, is a qualified guide leading London history walks focusing on gender, sex and class. Bespoke tours available.
The always sold-out sex-industry walk is scheduled for a weekday in August: Friday the 15th. One stop is seen here in William Hogarth's picture of the Rose Tavern, showing Tom Rakewell, a lot of hookers and a woman undressing for a dance. eventbrite.co.uk/e/londons-sex-…
Thanks @Londonist for listing Wind in the Willows, a riverside walk that can't be bettered for beautiful houses, women's history, dreamy views and habitat for creatures of the river. Sat 19 July. eventbrite.co.uk/e/wind-in-the-…
London guide Laura Agustin (aka the Naked Anthropologist) leads a walk entitled "Wind in the Willows". A Thames riverside walk from Richmond to Twickenham which will include a refreshment break at the White Swan pub. Sat 19 July at 1pm. Bookings⬇️ eventbrite.co.uk/e/wind-in-the-…
Thanks to @Londonist for listing a walk that centres the workers: navvies who solved problems on the ground as they dug canals and railways. 14 June. eventbrite.co.uk/e/primrose-hil…
We're supposed to see that the hidey-hole shows garish taste and new furnishings. Respectability is tied to Old Families not nouveau-riche young sprats making dough in the City.
WH Hunt's painting shows a man who's fitted a mistress up in a garish flat in St John's Wood. Symbols include a left hand with no wedding band, a cat toying with a bird and an unraveling carpet. The moment is when her conscience of wrongdoing is awakened. eventbrite.co.uk/e/disgraceful-…
Or what if they preferred selling sex to scrubbing floors or selling matches? The young women in the first half of the walk certainly did, and couldn't be bothered to care that the Respectables called them Disgraceful. eventbrite.co.uk/e/disgraceful-…
What happened to Eliza? Nothing bad, she went on to marry and work. But Stead's crusade led to a law raising the age of consent for girls from 13 to 16. The claim was it 'protected' girls. How if they were being abducted? And what if they had no other way to make a living?
White-clad purity was hardly a thing the poor could afford to aspire to, so I'm guessing the wagons were full of middle-class girls.
Stead's crusade set off a slavery panic that included wagonloads of girls dressed in white parading in Hyde Park. Interesting today's protesters wear black (+taped mouths) instead. For 19c protesters purity was sacred whereas now it's mostly not.
Disgraceful or Disgraced? With respectability as the standard women needing money had little choice: eventbrite.co.uk/e/disgraceful-…
WT Stead may have deplored english girls being abducted into foreign brothels but he crusaded to make money on the story. He bought a poor girl from this level of poverty to prove it was possible and happily went to prison as a pimp-celebrity getting rich. Lisson Grove history.
In St John's Wood adventurous women who didn't marry were called Disgraceful by pious guardians of Respectable Society - eg novelist George Eliot. Nearby the 1st mediatic sex-trafficking scandal was created by WT Stead who 'bought' a girl. @footprintsldn eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-tour…
London Walks this week include a look at the Huguenots, London's airports, "disgraceful women", and the Roman city. Book at footprintsoflondon.com @rob_s_smith @Charnowalks @NakedAnthropolo
London guide Laura Agustin (aka the Naked Anthropologist) leads a walk entitled "Primrose Hill and the Navvies Who Built Canals and Railways" on Sat 14 June at 1pm. Bookings⬇️ eventbrite.co.uk/e/primrose-hil…
Saturday's walk in Rochford and along the River Roach reveals the history of folks who didn't accept the still hierarchical C of E after the Dissolution. This was a 'hotbed of dissent' in a landscape of mud and stark fields. @rob_s_smith @footprintsldn eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-tour…
6 women. A migrant works in a brothel, a laundress sells sex in alleyways, an alewife sells to brothels, a cook fixes travellers up with girls, a street-vendor picks pockets to avoid sexwork. Is no one free of the sex industry? The 14-yr-old maid - so far.
Thanks to @Londonist for the big vote of confidence. This time the popular walk on medieval working women is in the evening - this Thursday 1800/6pm in perfect weather, it looks like. W/ @rob_s_smith eventbrite.co.uk/e/scratching-o…