Nightwalkers: Prostitute Narratives from the Eighteenth Century

by Laura J. Rosenthal (editor)

This anthology makes available for the first time a selection of narratives by and about prostitutes in the eighteenth century. These memoirs, some written by and some about eighteenth-century prostitutes, offer important insights into female experience and class and gender roles in the period. Portraying the lives of women in both success and hardship, written in voices ranging from repentant to bawdy, the memoirs show the complexity of the lives of the “nightwalkers.” For eighteenth-century readers, as Laura Rosenthal writes in her introduction, these memoirs “offered sensual and sentimental journeys, glimpses into high life and low life, and relentless confrontations with the explosive power of money and the vulnerability of those without it.” Offering a range of narratives from the conservative and reformist to the unabashedly libertine, this book provides a fascinating alternative look into eighteenth-century culture.

229 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2008

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nightwalkers is a collection of prostitute narratives from the 1700s written not by the women themselves, but by those who claimed to possess the facts of their lives. So though we don’t hear their experiences first-hand, we do get a good look at the reasons why these specific women, and others like them, wound up in the oldest profession. The editor, Laura Rosenthal, did a fine job of gathering together a cross-section of reform, sentimental, and libertine narratives, each differing in style and tone and purpose (though none are the least titillating). As a result, we learn that some prostitutes, like today’s expensive call girls, moved freely and openly in high society, setting themselves up time and again as a wealthy man’s mistress in order to extract as much money and property from him as they could, occasionally leaving him bankrupt, or nearly so, in the process. Others longed to reform, but then as now, character references were needed for most respectable jobs, and these women had none. We find, too, that with society’s help, some fortunate prostitutes were able to mend their ways and live a happier life.

If you’ve read Richardson, Fielding, or Defoe, then you have an idea of what a prostitute’s life was like in eighteenth century England. But through the narratives in Nightwalkers, the reader comes to understand that not all of society condemned these women, and indeed, only the strictest moralist would find them all worthy of condemnation. Circumstances – There but for the grace of God go I – put many of these women on the streets and kept them there. Of course, there were those like Sally Salisbury, whose biography opens the book, who seemed born to the profession. No one reveled in her work like the beautiful, devious, acid-tongued Sally. “It was always my Ambition,” she was reported as saying, “to be a First-Rate Whore, and I think, I may say, without Vanity, That I am the greatest, and make the most considerable Figure of any in the Three Kingdoms.”

[Martine Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this very much to explore the language of 18th century prostitution, looking particularly for phrases and interesting terms in direct reported speech. The opening section on Sally Salisbury was the most interesting, being an apparent collection of anecdotes by men who had known Sally and could recall her caustic, confrontational manner. She is the strongest personality in this collection, by today's standards a mix of stroppy overpaid supermodel and gold-digger extraordinaire.
The subtext of the other narratives, either tales of moral downfall or religious redemption, interested me far less. As another reviewer notes, there is almost nothing erotic in the pages, the exchanges being chiefly financial

[Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

a book about whores should be more exciting than this.
or not.