Walking Tour - Disgraceful Women of Old St John's Wood

This walk begins 200 years ago in St John’s Wood, where family arrangements routinely diverged from Victorian rules of respectability. What did it mean to be a Kept Woman? Was it only disreputable or an act of shameful immorality? Some mistresses were movers and shakers, like Harriet Howard who financed the return of Louis Napoleon to the French throne. Novelist George Eliot lived placidly for many years with someone else’s husband, not far from a brothel where sex workers were known as laundresses. A bigamous Agapemonite minister lived with multiple rich unmarried female followers. All this took place in a suburb built with high walls and thick trees to ensure privacy and discretion.

We walk south into Lisson Grove, considered a Victorian slum, where journalist WT Stead staged a scandal he called The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, when he bought Eliza Armstrong from her mother to prove it could be done.

How much did social class determine whether society was appalled by alternative sexual arrangements? Were unmarried women with lovers heroines or victims? Come on this walk to consider scandals of centuries ago that might sound familiar today, and at the same time join up two neighbourhoods you never thought about together before.

Laura Agustín is an historian and anthropologist interested in illuminating the lives of unnamed people in history - the 'ordinary folk'.

is Laura's longtime blog, now dedicated to historical walks that highlight issues of Gender, Sex and Class.

Host or Publisher Laura Agustín, Footprints of London