Tweet

Sara Sheridan

7 Sep, 11 tweets, 5 min read

🧵About the historical sex trade in Edinburgh. Goodmorning. The go to starting place is Ranger's Impartial List of Ladies of Pleasure published 1775. It contains 66 entries of 'hoors' around town. Here's Lady Agnew's listing👇For sure there were more than 66 but it's a start /1

@BeattieDr

Lady Agnew was nothing new. Edinburgh had long been a 'stewing pot' Here's a prosecution from 1564 via @BeattieDr 'hur' this time not 'hoor' When prosecuted women cd have their hair cut short or be sent beyond the city limits until a 'relaxio' was ordered and they cd return/2

Once the New Town was built the sex trade was relegated to the Old Town. Here's a Victorian photo of a sex worker in a door which is recognisable as Acheson House. Known as the Cock & Trumpet (see the figures on the pediment) James McLevy mentions it in his 1830s police notes. /3

Belle Brodie in The Fair Botanists is a courtesan so I placed her house at 17 Warriston Cres 👇 (beyond the city limits at the time bounded by the Water of Leith) The 20th century's most famous Edinburgh brothel was also beyond the Leith at 17 Danube St run by Dora Noyce 👇 /4

Working beyond the city limits was smart. Prostitute Margaret Burns was banned from her Rose Street rooms by the Lord Ordinary tho she contested his judgement. After her death (in her 20s - the life of a Georgian prostitute was tough) Rabbie Burns wrote a poem about her. /5

Sex workers cd be confined in the Magdelene House (first set up on the Canongate nr the Cock & Trumpet) & the Lock Hospital (where they cd be examined & detained against their will) Such was the fear of venereal disease that city councils sometimes passed bizarre legislation /6

In Glasgow for example, the council made it illegal for women to live alone. FFS. Contraception was dodgy also. Here is a modern day recreation of a Georgian condom. Made. From. Cotton. With. A. Ribbon. On. It. 😂 These also came in animal gut. Lovely. /7

Just for info I have never come across prosecutions of or a guide to rent boys. This may be cos male prostitution happened w/in the confines of men-only clubs, which were rife across the city. The National Trust sometimes runs 'Intimacy Tours' theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/j… /8

@Anstey_Harris

.@Anstey_Harris & I went on this tour a while ago & enjoyed. I immortalised a couple of Edinburgh's many historical sex workers in Where Are The Women & also wrote Belle in #TheFairBotanists. The research was fascinating but sad. The double standards of the patriarchy in action/9

Tx for reading my historical sex for sale in Edinburgh 🧵 Want to read my research in action? My books are here: uk.bookshop.org/lists/sara-s-b… Feel free to add more info to the thread - that's what threads are for. Plus I started a new insta account to follow instagram.com/thefairbotanis… ♥️

@witchesofscotl1

I also want to add cos someone has messaged, that I don't know of any witch trials that were instigated against sex workers. Women were certainly penalised for their sex lives tho - anyone who was 'different' stood to be accused. Go to @witchesofscotl1 podcast - it's all there!

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

More from @sarasheridan

Sara Sheridan

@sarasheridan

6 Jul

Today: a thread about how clothes inspire characters... cos you know I find fashion inspirational right? When I was developing characters for Fair Botanists I chose palettes for each woman. It annoys me that Regency women are always portrayed in muslin - it was a colourful era/1

This dress for example, was worn by one of the women (Elizabeth) to an evening party (her palette was pale pinks and blues) IRL this one is in the MET. Knowing what a character is wearing makes them easier to envisage as they move thru the story. I love the gauze effect... /2

Not all the clothes I chose were worn by characters tho - this beautiful jacket from an earlier era was in my mind when I wrote a scene outside the debtors' prison sited at Holyrood. One of the debtors is trying to sell it - and it's older & worn, which tells its own story. /3

Read 8 tweets

Sara Sheridan

@sarasheridan

5 Jul

Ok - so here's what happened at the weekend. I didn't tell you while it was going on cos Things. My daughter noticed a couple hanging round outside her flat, playing with her dog, Kim Chi with a squeaky toy, thru the railings. Aw, she thought, mebbe their dog died or sthg... /1

Kim Chi btw is a rescue, a sweet wee staffy with bad eyes and a lovely nature. The couple came back a few times - very kind to the dog and popping treats thru the railings now. My daughter filmed them and posted on her social media about these sweet people... /2

This weekend, there was a crash outside in the middle of the night. Molly thought it was the wind knocking over old vases outside on the bench. But it turns out someone was trying to climb down and there was a familiar ... squeak. Yes - the nice couple were dog nappers. WHAT? /3

Read 7 tweets

Sara Sheridan

@sarasheridan

27 Jan

So: a short thread about the ongoing effect of the Holocaust (also called the Shoah) cos it's #HolocaustMemorialDay #LightTheDarkness #NeverAgain I grew up in a wealthy Jewish family in Edinburgh in the 70s. Nobody mentioned the Shoah. People didn't want to upset or scare kids./1

At the age when most kids learned Santa wasn't real, 1 of my Jewish pals found a video of a BBC doc about the death camps. They shared it. We were terrified. We came from families that had left places (Russia in the 1880s/1910s), Hungary, Germany None of us had realised why /2

My family regularly had summer parties. Big buffet. Music in the garden. Maybe 100 folk. We had a big house. It was at one of these parties I made the connection that some of my parents' friends (ie some of my friends' parents) had survived what had happened. /3

Read 10 tweets

Sara Sheridan

@sarasheridan

25 Jan

I grew up in a house with an English Catholic Dad and a Scottish Jewish Mum. As a kid everything to me was just language. Just words. We spoke English with a sprinkling of Yiddish and Scots. I learned French and Latin at school and Ancient Hebrew at Jewish Sunday school ... /1

I think this is part of where my fascination for story came from. I still sometimes use vocabulary and don't know which language it comes from - most recently in a book where I used the word thole that I assumed was English but is really Scots. I only found out cos /2

the editor picked me up on it and I had to look the word up. At college I studied Anglo Saxon too (It was a breeze cos Yiddish) I feel incredibly lucky to have such a rich spread of vocabulary. I also love the sound of language I can't understand. I listen to Gaelic speakers /3

Read 4 tweets

Sara Sheridan

@sarasheridan

27 Dec 20

THREAD: Scottish women who had impact in Europe. Born illegitimate in Oban, Victorian Rose Blaze de Bury moved to Paris, where she hosted a salon, wrote several novels, drafted an economic plan for Austria & helped set up a bank. She corresponded with Bismark. Jawdropping no? /1

Next, let's go to the EU era & Grace Campbell who went to court in Strasbourg in the 70s to have corporal punishment banned in UK schools. She won and Westminster had to legislate. What. A. Mama. vimeo.com/236910048 /2

Elizabeth Wiskemann gathered intelligence undercover in Switzerland during WWII. When the Allies refused to bomb Auschwitz she sent a coded msg she knew wd be intercepted & halted Hungarian Jewish deportations. Later she was Professor of International Relations at Edinburgh /3

Read 14 tweets

Sara Sheridan

@sarasheridan

18 Dec 20

So Menopause adventures: A THREAD👇of things that have worked for me. It's a personal journey but here's what I did. 1st, when I started researching most of what I read was way too subjective so I decided I needed measureables. Tip 1: take your base temperature every day. /1

If you have an iphone the health app will let you track it. I discovered my temperature was on the low side. 37 is normal. Days I woke with a 35 were bad days. Days that started 36 were better. And yes, there are ways to bring your temperature up. Among the most effective ... /2

eating protein & carbs together every 4 hrs, eating breakfast when I got up & having dark hot choc before bed. Hot flushes: These happened separately - but keeping my basal temp at 37 ie improving my metabolism helped balance the hormones that gave me hot flushes. No question/3

Read 16 tweets

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!