Tumult of Women - Rag Fair, Rosemary Lane, Brothels and the Docks

Tumult of Women - Rag Fair, Rosemary Lane, Brothels and the Docks

East of the Tower rag-sellers, sex workers, thieves and so-called witches held sway in an area flattened by building the 1805 dock.

By The Naked Anthropologist

Date and time

Location

Outside Tower Hill Station

Tower Hill Station Trinity Square London EC3N 4DJ United Kingdom

Refund Policy

Refunds up to 1 days before event.

About this event

  • Event lasts 2 hours 30 minutes

Women reigned in Rag Fair, which extended from Tower Hill along Rosemary Lane into Cable Street in the 17th- to 19th-century parish of Stepney. The permanent market centred near Wellclose Square, but many vendors were mobile, locating anywhere they could.

Samuel Pepys called Damaris Page 'the most Famous Bawd in the Towne'. Poor women worked in her houses, sold rags and thieved, alternating occupations according to need. In her brothel near the Navy Victualling Office, Page allowed press-gangs in for a fee, and as reward The Bawdy-House Riots of 1668 targeted her. She became a property-speculator and in her will left tuppence apiece to 'the Sisterhood' (of whores) to buy thread to mend their stockings.

Some of the back-alleys still wend their ways east towards one of the first London Docks, the building of which in 1805 razed the area to make basins for sailing ships, surrounded by high walls to keep out river-pirates. Around the dock walls a myriad of businesses set up to service ships and sailors. Tobacco was a major import, its wharf preserved and accessible, along with two tall ships in replica.

The artist JMW Turner kept a house in Wapping for weekends with his longtime love, Sophia Booth. One of two local women accused of witchcraft in the 1600s lived nearby, Lydia Rogers.

Fans of Call the Midwife (television series and the memoir it's based on) will be interested to see where Mary escaped from one of the notorious brothel-cafés of Cable Street in the era of bomb-sites and decline. Where we walk was part of the midwives' area of remit in Stepney.

We end near Wapping Station with numerous pubs to unwind in.

The Naked Anthropologist is Laura's longtime blog, now dedicated to historical walks that highlight issues of Gender, Sex and Class.

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The Naked Anthropologist

Laura Agustín has been a writer, researcher and critical historian all her life. She has been a Londoner since the 1960s, although she has lived in other towns and countries. Author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry, she has for many years focused on getting the stories out of women and others marginalised because of being poor, foreign, ‘different’ or doing jobs some folks think are Wrong, in the present and in the past. She spent time with illuminated manuscripts at the British Library looking for clues to how women lived 1000 years ago, and couldn’t stop reading even if she wanted to. She is known as The Naked Anthropologist. She has qualified as a tour guide in order to take this focus to the streets, where guided history walks rarely talk about the poor except as objects of charity.

£20
Sep 13 · 1:00 PM GMT+1