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executed. One particular target for public rage was Charles’s principal mistress at the time, Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine, who was hated for being a Roman Catholic. Surveying the wreckage of the brothels, Elizabeth Cresswell took it upon herself to sponsor a seditious pamphlet directed at Barbara Villiers entitled ‘The Poor Whores’ Petition to Lady Castlemaine’.
    This pamphlet, which may have been written by the diarist John Evelyn (who also hated Barbara Villiers), and was co-authored by Elizabeth’s lover, the anti-Catholic MP Sir Thomas Player, begs Lady Castlemaine to help the poor whores, her less fortunate sisters from Dog and Bitch Yard, Lukener’s Lane, Saffron Hill, Moorfields, Chiswell Street, Rosemary Lane, Nightingale Lane, Ratcliffe Highway, Well Close, Church Lane and East Smithfield, whose homes have been destroyed by the apprentices, calling on her for support as a fellow whore who should show some feeling for her sisters.
    Unfortunately, this pamphlet infuriated Barbara Villiers, who was horrified at being compared with London’s common whores. It also catapulted Elizabeth into the limelight, the last place any self-respecting madam wishes to find herself. Elizabeth had bankrolled her MP lover, and suddenly all his debts were called in. Her girls were persuaded to give testimony against her by the authorities. As Elizabeth had been a cruel employer, this did not prove a hard task. After thirty years in the business, she was sentenced to Bridewell, where she died, aged sixty, in 1684. Elizabeth’s last request was that a sermon be preached at her funeral, for which the preacher would receive £10, but only if he could say nothing bad about her. Eventually a preacher was found who managed to deliver the following lines:
    By the Will of the Deceased it is expected that I should mention her and say nothing but Well of her. All that I shall say of her therefore is this. She was born well, she liv’d well and she died well , for she was born with the name Cresswell, she liv’d in Clerkenwell and she died in Bridewell. 48
    The most notorious of our three bawds was undoubtedly Priss Fotheringham. Born in Scotland around 1615, Priss found her way to London and is first glimpsed in the records of Newgate gaol, after stealing some garments from a widow, Elizabeth Cragg. Already a prostitute, and scarred by smallpox, Priss was not without her charms. One acquaintance described her when young as ‘a cat eyed gypsy, pleasing to the eye in her finery’. 49 Priss was also a highly resilient young woman: after being released from jail she set up as bawd of ‘The Six Windmills’ in Moorfields, which was to become known, infamously, as ‘Priscilla Fotheringham’s Chuck Office’. This is where Priss performed her pièce de résistance , an ‘abominable practice’ dating back to the days of ancient Rome, whereby the prostitute stood upside down with her legs spread apart, allowing customers to throw coins into her vagina. This was known as ‘chucking’ and was a real money-spinner. It also required considerable gymnastic ability on the part of the whore, although clients could be relied upon to secure the girl’s legs.
    In her early days, Priss could perform this feat several times a day, standing on her head with ‘naked breech and belly while four cully-rompers chuck’d in sixteen half-Crowns into her Commoditie’. 50 The Six Windmills drew a considerable clientele and proved wildly popular. As Priss grew weary with age and increasingly more disabled, she trained up new talent to perform, such as the Dutch prostitute known as ‘Mrs Cupid’, described here by Garfield:
    When French Dollars, Spanish Pistoles and English Halfe-Crowns were chucked as plentifully as Rhenish Whine into the Dutch Wench’s two holes, the half crowns chuck’d into her commoditie did lesser harm than the Rhenish wine, for