Haven't blogged lately: the Muse has been rather retiring lately, and, I might add, something of a surly drunk. But here's a jolly passage from The Floating Brothel by Sian Rees (the book is about the transportation of female convicts to Botany Bay):

Another East End twosome currently in Newgate under sentence of transportation were to Parts Beyond the Seas were Poll Randall and Mary Butler. These two had comitted an even more audacious raid on Joseph Clark at a lodging-house or brothel in Cable Street... On the night of 10 November 1787, Joseph Clark was strolling down Cable Street with the extraordinarily incautious sum of £40 in his pocket and half a cheese on his head[!]. When he found himself seized from behind by Poll Randall and Mary Butler and dragged into a house, it was, he explained to a bemused court, care for his cheese which prevented his putting up any resistance. Inside, his cheese was snatched and this, he went on, was why he could not leave...

Joseph Clark held out for his cheese during half a pint of gin, a game of cards, a further half of gin and supper, although he did object as supper as suggested that 'I only want my cheese and to go home'. But suddenly the mood changed. Poll and Mary hauled him upstairs- 'you could not resist at all?' asked an incredulous judge- and forcibly undressed him. 'She threw me on the bed!' he said in his defense. 'I cried out, for God's sake do not use me ill!' It was only when Poll demanded the banknotes in his pockets that Clark realized they were not just after his cheese. Even at this dramatic point, they all had another round of beef and gin, Clark still tucked up in bed. The girls were prepared to humour him for a while, but at a certain point Poll Randall ran out of patience- she wanted a drink: 'She took both my hands and put them behind me; I was afraid to make any resistance!' Both Poll Randall and Mary Butler were 13.

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