Flagellation, 1752. This one is explicitly set up as a school-boy/school-mistress fantasy.

Credit again to http://georgianbawdyhouse.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/a-little-light-spanking-1752/

Sarah Waters may have led me to misinterpret this at first…

B.E. is actually just referring to French kissing (more often referred to in the 17thC as ‘Florentine kissing’).

From B.E. Gent. A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, in its several Tribes, of Gypsies, Beggers, Thieves, Cheats, &c. with an Addition of some Proverbs, Phrases, Figurative Speeches, &c. Useful for all sorts of People, (especially Foreigners) to secure their Money and preserve their Lives; besides very Diverting and Entertaining, being wholly New. London 1699.

Thomas Rowlandson, Six Stages of Mending a Face (29^th May 1792).

c/o http://georgianbawdyhouse.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/six-stages-of-mending-a-face-1792/

The deceyte of women, to the instruction and ensample of all men, yonge and olde, newly corrected (c.1557).

Definitely in the running for Best Cover Ever.

Thomas Rowlandson, The Breaking Up of the Blue Stocking Club (c1815).

Another play on Marlowe’s ‘The Passionate Shepherd to his Love’. I’ve added a few notes.

 ‘The Wooing Rogue’

Come live with me, and be my Whore,

And we will beg from door to door,

Then under a hedge we’l sit and louse us,          [remove our lice]

Until the Beadle come to rouse us,                   [a sort of policeman]

And if they’l give us no relief,

Thou shalt turn Whore and I’l turn Thief.

Thou shalt turn Whore and I’l turn Thief.

If thou canst rob, then I can steal,

And we’l eat Roast-meat every meal:

Nay, we’l eat White-bread every day,

And throw our mouldy Crusts away,

And twice a day we will be drunk,

And then at night I’l kiss my Punk.

And then at night I’l kiss my Punk.

And when we both shall have the Pox,                        [syphilis]

We then shall want both Shirts and Smocks,

To shift each others mangy hide,

That is with Itch so pockifi’d;

We’l take some clean ones from a hedge,

And leave our old ones for a pledge.

And leave our old ones for a pledge.

Published in Westminster Drollery (London: 1671); sigs. B2v-B3r.

Thomas Rowlandson,Come Live with Me and Be My Love(c1815).

(Rowlandson is playing on opening line of Christopher Marlowe’s ‘The Passionate Shepherd to his Love’)

Gov. Arthur Phillip, shortly after taking charge of Australia in 1786, reflects on adequate treatment for male homosexuality (which was, unsurprisingly, a significant occurrance in a penal colony very low on women. England soon arranged for far greater numbers of female convicts to be transported, to even things out):

“The death penalty should be limited to two offenses—those of murder and sodomy. But I doubt whether the fear of death ever prevented a man of no principle from committing a bad action. I would deliver a murderer or sodomist as a prisoner to the natives of New Zealand and let them eat him, for, the dread of this will operate much stronger than the fear of death.” 

In Norton, Rictor. Mother Clap’s Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England, 1700-1830. London: GMP, 1992.

commodity: “The private parts of a modest woman, and the public parts of a prostitute.”

—Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue(1785); sig. F2r.