Beware, gents: A pair of Mantraps! 1780s

Just wanted to share these two lovely prints, depicting a couple of women of dubious morals, or 'MANTRAPS' as the artists have it.  The images are obviously meant to titillate, but the warning is clear, gentlemen: giving into such a temptation could be your ruin! The first dates to 1780 and shows a fashionable (and rather...

Two at a Time for a Shilling! (1798)

... Clearly the gentleman doesn't have expensive taste. - 'The Economy of Love, or Two at a Time for a Shilling', attributed to Richard Newton. Courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library.

Exhibition: Georgians Revealed at the British Library

I have a suspicion that, for the next five months, the British Library is going to be my second home. Yesterday I was fortunate enough to attend a preview of their new exhibition 'Georgians Revealed' – commemorating the 300th anniversary of the accession of George I to the throne – and I was mightily impressed...

Can drinking tea turn you into a ‘harlot’?

In eighteenth-century England, there were many reasons why families might have been torn apart, or why dutiful wives and hardworking husbands could suffer a fall from grace. Heart-rending tales of orphaned children, abandoned lovers and destitution fill the pages of contemporary newspaper columns and court records. For some, one of the prime suspects behind the...