Royal St. James's: Being a Story of Kings, Clubmen, and Courtesans

A scandalous and sumptuously illustrated history of the Royal parish of St James's in London from earliest times to the heyday of the Regency. Bordered by Piccadilly, Whitehall and St James's Park, fashionable St James's became a byword for extravagant living in Restoration England. Street by street, E. J. Burford recalls the affairs of the peers and procuresses, princes and pimps who once lived there. In fascinating detail, he records the sexual manners of a less inhibited age: the 'Nunneries' opposite the Royal Palace of St James's where country maids fell to whoring, the corners where cherrysellers and Tiddy Doll men (gingerbread sellers) displayed their wares. Working from unpublished documents, broadsheets, letters, ballads and cartoons by Gillray and Rowlandson, the author colourfully portrays the astonishing variety of the little world of St James's. He describes the longstanding rivalry between the Beaux and Bloods of the great Georgian clubs of White's, Boodle's and Crockford's and the often harsh lives of the neighbourhood's poorer inhabitants. In this new classic of social history, E. J. Burford has written a welcome companion to his highly successful history of Covent Garden, Wits, Wenchers and Wantons.