Love in the Time of Victoria: Sexuality and Desire Among Working-Class Men and

* Item Description

Using firsthand documents uncovered in the archives of a London foundling hospital, Barret-Ducrocq offers a marvelously acute census of Victorian sexual and moral attitudes.

Introduction

1. LABOURING CLASSES, DEPRAVED CLASSES The Setting A Vast Hothouse of Sexual Immorality The signs of immorality Use of the Streets / Places of Amusement / Living Conditions: One-Room Dwellings and Sexual Licence Characters in the family drama The Head of the Family / Children / Young People / Women The Natural History of Transgressions Profligacy The Reign of the Impure / Animality

2. THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL

3. LOVE AND MARRIAGE 'My vile seducer has been the cause of four other young women's ruin Casual Loves and Impossible Romances

'Female servants are far from being a virtuous class' 'Nice life this, for a girl of three and twenty, my Kerristian friends' 'Home, sweet home' Temptations and Precautions 'As I was going to Chelsea one day, I met with a pretty girl on the way...' Courtship Parents and Family / Friends and Workmates / Employers / A Very Discreet Courtship / 'There Was No Courtship or Promise of Marriage' 'Where they went to I never heard say...but when she returned, Mrs. Gray said she'd very much rumpl'd her muslin...' Sex before Marriage / Promises of Marriage: 'He promised me marriage, they all do' / Love Nests, Love Traps / The Question of Consent Words of love 'Now lost to all, her friends, her virtue fled...' 'He promised to marry her soon, but soon he forgot all about her...' Posting Banns / Living in Sin: 'Before everything went wrong' / Abortion Attempts / 'I told him at which he seemed frightened' / 'He said he would see me through my trouble' Seduced and abandoned Family and friends 'No Sir, Missus don't permit no followers' Rules of Sexual Morality

EPILOGUE

Notes Bibliography