William Sutton's Blog, page 28
August 10, 2016
Victorian Ads
From Lawless and the #FlowersofSin (and all but one of these titles are real, I kid you not).
Nods to Peter Fryer’s Private Case, Public Scandal.
FLOWER GARDEN CATALOGUE, ANCIENT & MODERN, HOLYWELL STREET 1864
(appended to erotic publishers William Dugdale & John Hotten’s complaint, for the perusal of Commissioner Payne)
The Lifted Curtain
The Ins and Outs of London
Sodom, or The Quintessence of Debauchery
The London Jilt: or, the Politick Whore
Lucretia, or the Delights of Cunnyland
The Ladies’ Telltale & The Lustful Turk
The Romance of the Rod
The Whore’s Rhetoric
The Sixteen Pleasures, or About All the Schemes of Venus
The Natural History of the Frutex Vulvaria
Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies, or Man of Pleasure’s Kalendar
The Crafty Whore
The Cockchafer: Flash, Frisky and Funny Songs, Never before Printed and Adapted for Gentlemen Only
The Cabinet of Venus Unlocked
Mutton Walk Cyprians
August 9, 2016
Victorian Ads
Chouchoute threw off another garment. Hat, jacket, shawl, chemise. She stood before us, gleaming golden in her bodice, gloves and new-fangled bloomers. She looked up at us and wiped her brow.
“Get ’em off.”
She squared up to us, much as a navvy might look at a pile of dirt. A flutter flew through the audience; the separation between viewer and viewed seemed flimsy. Chouchoute threw down an immaculate white gauntlet. The music faltered, the house lights rose; she peered out from the stage, offended, and raised a finger.
“Who?” she said abruptly, gazing down lasciviously. “Who has spoke?”
“Him there!” Jocular voices called, and the guilty gent was shoved toward her outstretched finger.
Chouchoute drew a cane from her high boot. She leant down, catching the hapless fellow’s chin with the tip of the cane. His gaze was directed onto the twin orbs above him, brightly lit, swelling beneath the bodice. There was no escape. The music resumed. She kneeled on the edge of the stage, drawing him forward in rhythm, until his face was against her muscular thighs. The fellow’s eyes were bulging.
“Such close inspection.” She spoke in a faux French accent. “One really should have shaved.”
August 7, 2016
Victorian Ads: Kate Hamilton’s
The bell was rung, velveteen drapes pulled aside, champagne thrust into his hand. At the heart of this pageant of bodies, nestled in the palace of ottomans and pale rouge divans, beneath a softdome illustrated with lurid Olympian daubings, sat a vast ungovernable whale of a woman, a queen of the Orient, enthroned above her minions. Kate Hamilton herself.
Darlington winked.
“Long tempo, nanty vader, Jimmy Darlington,” she crooned. “Roll up, roll up, my lover boy. Choose between Lila, layer of lords, Cora, comfort of commodores, and Sabine, saviour of seamen.”
“Nah, Kitty,” a pale woman with ample bosoms piped up, lolling on a gent’s knee. “I never saves none of it.”
Kate Hamilton erupted, a blancmange Vesuvius.
Lawless and the #FlowersofSin
August 6, 2016
Victorian Ads: the Worm
“You’re a novice, you are. Guarding the public? Don’t make me laugh. They’ll eat you alive here.” With a sigh he stepped out across the thoroughfare. “There is them as has no respect for the traditions we work in. Them as regards us as vermin and would gladly see us put down. But me…I’m in the habit of forgiving them their ignorance. Besides,” he grinned, rubbing his hands, “what is life without a few enemies?”
Worm, Lawless & the Devil of Euston Square, published by Titan.
August 5, 2016
August 4, 2016
August 3, 2016
August 2, 2016
Victorian Ads
Day 2 #LovelyAds #VictorianLondon
Extract from Lawless and the Flowers of Sin
Newspaper advertisements 1863
WATSON’S MUSEUM OF LIVING CURIOSITIES REQUIRES:
Fat Boy
World’s Tallest Woman
Australians
Art Phillips seeks a Living Mermaid
Mute girl requires dwarf, able-bodied, for private shows; flexibility essential
Harvey’s Midgets: need accommodation; current too small
Victorian Ads
Day 3 #LovelyAds #VictorianLondon
Pink pills for pale people, and information regarding a ghastly scene.
(Pics from Blist’s Hill Victorian village in Ironbridge.)
July 31, 2016
Crime Readers’ Association
There are many crime fiction websites, but few are better organised than the CRA, the Crime Readers’ Association, affiliated to and informed by the CWA (the Writers’ equivalent.
They used my piece about Crime Travelling on their website a while back.
Where do you go to revisit the past? For Lawless and the Flowers of Sin, I drew vital lessons from my two years in southern Italy in sexual hypocrisy, organised crime, political reinvention and moral bankruptcy (there being such a shortage of these vices at home).
In Brazil, it was as bad as Dickensian London. Corporations are corrupt (inevitably, unimpeachably), politicians exploit (why wouldn’t they?), the wealthy elite control the nation (but do great work for charity). When does it become unacceptable? When people can’t eat, despite international festivals; when people live in boxes by the insanitary river; when honest workers with two jobs can’t support families, despite all the vast infrastructure spending.
But of course it could never be like that, here in Britain. Could it, now?
