ACTRESSES AS WORKING WOMEN 173

ACTRESSES AS WORKING WOMEN The truth is, the evil of which he complains had become unbearable If we are trying to purify the Haymarket, if the pose plastique is put down, if the infamous Judge and Jury Club [e.g the Coal Hole, a precursor to music halls] is modified, if the abominations of Holywell-street exist no more, still less can it be permitted that fashionable vice should mainly usurp the boxes of the theatres, and indecency and indecorum shamelessly run riot on the stage.13 None of these enterprises are unique to the West End, but unlike The Cut in Lambeth, the City Road through Islington, and the Ratcliffe Highway through Wapping, the entertainments of the West End were simultaneously perceived and grandly pardoned as integral parts of the squalor, petty larceny, and sexual markets that surrounded them The penny theatres in Whitechapel, in contrast, were cleared out entirely once the neighbourhood became a focus for sectarian reformers: there, nothing inimical to middle-class purity, once detected, was free from missionary interference.14 Clerics in Knightsbridge also felt their philanthropic work was counteracted by the greater attractions offered in cheap theatres, and tried to replicate the East End missionaries’ success.15 But in the West End, the customary rounds of men’s evenings included a veritably sacrosanct combination of actresses and, in its most innocent conclusion, a late supper Few, if any, areas of London were free of prostitutes The West End’s trade was nominally divided between the theatre district, and Chelsea and Hanover Square further west (Kings Road, Sloane Square, and Victoria).16 Daytime prostitution centred on the principal middle-class shopping streets, but at night the market shifted to accommodate the main pedestrian and vehicular routes of theatregoers From 7.00 p.m when traffic flowed between Mayfair, the City, and Charing Cross Station until 2.00 a.m when most pleasure-seekers had turned homeward, prostitutes were said to keep the Strand ‘literally impassable’.17 Pimped prostitutes strolled Covent Garden, Duke’s Court (off Drury Lane), Russell Court (off Bow Street), and all of the Strand from Holywell Street to Trafalgar Square—precisely following the course of theatres and two-a-night music halls Haymarket prostitutes were more specialized, engaging in their trade between 11.00 p.m and 1.00 a.m.; in other words, between the closing of Her Majesty’s, the Comedy, Pavilion, and Haymarket Theatres and the opening of Evans’s, Dubourg’s, the Hotel de Paris, the Cafe 144