The Ordeal of St. Sepulchre’S: A Campaign Against Organized Prostitution in Early 19th-Century London and the Emergence of Lower Middle-class Consciousness

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of organized prostitution in London during the 1820s, a crucial time and place in which modern middle-class values were developing and being asserted in an essentially urban setting. An account is given of a prolonged and expensive campaign conducted by one City parish in an effort to suppress the brothels within its boundaries. Analysis of the parish’s motivation, procedural steps, and the eventual outcomes of its activities provide insight into lower middle-class attitudes toward prostitution and the limitations of the legal means available for its control. The study accordingly attempts to provide a dynamic perspective on the early mobilization of representatives of this class against a particular and threatening aspect of urban disorder. It further suggests that this need to confront public behavior incompatible with the values of a modernizing world in this way was peculiar to the lower middle classes and perhaps even helped to create their identity.