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breakthrough as a protection against the horrors of venereal disease: ‘happy is the man who in his pocket keeps a well-made cundum, nor dreads the ills of shankers or cordes or buboes dire’ and as contraceptive, ruling out the appalling prospect of an ‘unknown big belly and the squalling brat’. This development, he assures the reader, would rule both the chaste marriage bed and the filthiest stews, ensuring endless sexual pleasure without unhappy consequences and no need to have recourse to the mercy baths of Leather Lane, where victims underwent painful and protracted treatment for venereal disease.
    While Charles II’s court gained a reputation for profligacy, Restoration London proved its equal by offering an extraordinary catalogue of sexual pleasures. The sex trade, driven underground by Cromwell’s Protectorate, flourished more vigorously than ever, offering something for every man, from the glamorous, top-drawer Venetian girls to the ‘ambulant whores’ who roamed the streets in the distinctive white aprons which indicated that they were available for business. The Venetian girls were so expensive that they catered only to the aristocracy, as may be seen from this itemized receipt from John Garfield’s series of satirical pamphlets, ‘The Wandering Whore’:
Summa Totalis & Bill of Charges
 
FOR Broaching a Belly unwemmed and unbored
£1.0.0
ITEM For the Magdalena’s Fee
10.0
ITEM For the Hectors Fee
2.6
ITEM For providing a fine Hollands Smock
10.0
ITEM For Dressing, Perfuming and Painting
5.0
ITEM For occupying the most convenient Room
5.0
ITEM For Bottles of Wine
£1.0.0
ITEM For Pickled Oysters, Anchoves, Olives
10.0
ITEM For Sweet Meats, Sugar-cakes, Peaches, Walnuts
10.0
ITEM For Musicke
£1.0.0
 
Summa Totalis £5.12.6d 41
    This does not include the courtesan’s own fee, which would have been at least £5, and the Holland smock would have been a present. But this represented the top end of the market with the best available girls, managed by a redoubtable circle of madams known as ‘the bawds’. These women, extraordinary characters in their own right, were quick to exploit their gullible clients and profit from the rich pickings available in the sex trade. The lives of the bawds are best illustrated by the stories of three forgotten women – Damaris Page, Elizabeth Cresswell and Priss Fotheringham – who met in prison and created an informal bawds’ guild, supporting one another through the trials and vicissitudes of the sex trade.
    Damaris Page was born into a life of abject poverty in the East End, around 1620. She first enters the record books in 1655, charged with assaulting Eleanor Pooley, ‘she being with child, with an instrument from which the said Eleanor died’. 42 This ‘instrument’ was described as a fork or prong with two tines, which had been thrust four and a half inches into Eleanor’s belly. In other words, Damaris had attempted to perform an abortion, and she was charged with manslaughter and sentenced to be hanged. Damaris pleaded for clemency on the grounds that she was herself pregnant. She gave birth to a stillborn child whilst in Newgate, before being pardoned by the Lord Protector, Richard Cromwell. Once freed, Damaris went back to the life and developed her own speciality, running brothels for sailors on the Ratcliffe Highway. There had been brothels in this location since Roman times, when the first galleys landed at Londinium and Damaris’s premises continued this ancient tradition, earning her the accolade of ‘The Great Bawd of the Seamen’ from none other than King James II. Damaris’s brothels offered basic fare of the sort enjoyed by Samuel Pepys: four girls on duty, taking each man as he came in on a ‘first cab off the rank’ basis and offering ‘a sturdy cunt for two shillings’. Damaris died peacefully in 1669 in her own bed, leaving a