Pod Insights Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society The Most Notorious Sex Worker of 18th Century Dublin About this episode Dublin in the 18th century was a wealthy colonial capitol, but only for a select few.
Amongst this hugely divided and politically charged world was the infamous sex worker Peg Plunkett, who counted some of society's most well to-do as her clients.
What was life like for most people in the Empire's 'second city' at this time? Did she really flirt with royalty? And what scandals did she get wrapped up in?
Joining Kate today is historian, author and co-host of our sister podcast After Dark, Anthony Delaney, to help us get to know this fascinating woman.
This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Kate Lister? Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
0:35 Kate Lister? Hello, my lovely Betwixters! It's me, Kate Leister. Welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets! Bop, bop, bop! That's not the new theme tune.
0:46 Kate Lister? Surprisingly. But before we can go any further together, I do have to tell you once again and forevermore, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects and you should be an adult too. That's just to keep everybody safe and snuggly. Do you feel safe and snuggly? Well, I certainly do. Right, let's crack on!
1:07 Kate Lister? If there's one thing you notice from strolling around Dublin in the mid-18th century, it is the glossy veneer of a well-to-do society. Look around you. These impressive houses are standing very tall, very on point, very Regency chic, with society's finest milling about. But as you can imagine, beneath that fair façade looks something rather murky, and what we see before us is far from the full story. Look behind these fancy doors and you will see that this enormous wealth divide has created, amongst other things, a thriving sale in sex. And one of the most notorious sex workers of 18th-century Dublin was none other than Peg Plunkett.
1:52 Kate Lister? Try saying that five times fast. Hers is a vibrant but tragic story, and we know all about it because Peg was kind enough to write her memoirs. Are you ready to find out more? Well, I know I am.
2:25 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. As you well know, listeners, you don't have to ask me twice to explore the life of one of history's most famous sex workers. I'm always there for that. And in today's episode, we are getting to know the marvelous, the fantastic Peg Plunkett. It's difficult to say fast, I'm telling you, try it. Anyway, Peg, she was a sex worker, a courtesan in Dublin in the mid 18th century, a time when the city was known as the British Empire's second city after London. But what was life like at the time for those who weren't super rich? What was Peg's story? Where did she come from? What was her tale? How did she end up in sex work? Who were her clients? And
3:07 Kate Lister? what did she have to say about all of it? Well, joining me today is the spectacularly fabulous Anthony Delaney, host of the sister podcast After Dark. He's also the author of The Marvelous Queer Jordans, A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers, and Homemakers. So if anyone can tell us about Peg, it's Anthony. Right, let's do it.
3:31 Kate Lister? Well, hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Anthony Delaney. How are you doing, lovely?
3:37 Speaker 01 I'm good, Kate Genevieve Lister. How are you?
3:41 Kate Lister? Oh, dude, fabulous.
3:42 Speaker 01 I don't know what your middle name is, but that's what it is now.
3:45 Kate Lister? I'm a woman that was born in the 80s, so it's Louise.
3:48 Speaker 01 Of course, of course.
3:49 Kate Lister? Obviously. Of course it is.
3:50 Speaker 01 What else would it be?
3:51 Kate Lister? There was one middle name doing the rounds then.
3:53 Speaker 01 Even my middle name is Louise. I too was born in the 80s.
3:57 Kate Lister? Everybody, they just went, Louise. Yeah, fuck it, that's what we'll do.
4:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:02 Kate Lister? We are here to talk about a woman with quite an extraordinary name, though.
4:06 Speaker 01 Well, quite a few extraordinary names, actually, which is one of the problems that we'll encounter. Yeah, Peg Plunkett, short for Peggety Plunkety. No, it's not. That's not what it's short for at all. But yeah.
4:17 Kate Lister? Peggety Louise Plunkety.
4:18 Speaker 01 Peggety Louise Plunkety. She is, as everyone from Ireland listening is going, oh, God, what is he saying? She is a really interesting person, as we're about to discover. But what we're going to need to decipher at some point is where the myth-making comes in, because some of the facts here, Kate, are not necessarily the most grounded facts.
4:38 Kate Lister? I know, but it's a fun story, though. But the story is the Peg Plunkett was the most famous courtesan in Ireland in the 18th century. She ran through the great and the good, and she stuck two fingers up at royalty, and she just, you know, it was like Mal Flanders. That's the story, isn't it?
4:57 Speaker 01 Yeah. And do you know what? In terms of that, there's truth in some of those, although
5:03 Kate Lister? Oh, good.
5:03 Speaker 01 I don't think she ever really met royalty. I think that's
5:07 Kate Lister? There's a little bit.
5:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, yeah, anyway, but that's that. But those other bits, I think we can say that summation is pretty true. But, I mean, if it makes sense, because what I want to kind of highlight at the beginning is to start with telling a little bit about 18th century Ireland as opposed to 18th century Britain, because I think people are more familiar with what's happening in England rather than what's happening in Ireland. And it is its own microcosm unto itself. So what we have in the 18th century in Ireland is this very small Protestant elite, which is under British control. And they are ruling the kingdom of Ireland, basically. Now, it is formally a kingdom, but in practice, it's governed by the British, as I said. And all of political power lands with this small Protestant
5:53 Speaker 01 ruling class, which is known as the Protestant Ascendancy. And the ascendancy bit basically comes into, we are ascending into power. And they are dominating parliament, law, all, you know, country administration, even though they are by far the vast minority in the country. So it's estimated that 90% of the land in Ireland was ruled by 10% of the population, them being the Protestant population. So we have a lot of restrictions on the Catholic majority. They are legally restricted in many ways through the penal laws, which we're a bit familiar with in in England too. And they can't sit Catholics can't sit in parliament, they can't hold public offices, they can't serve as army officers.
6:37 Speaker 01 They can inherit land, but only in very specific ways. So say, for instance, you know, the usual inheritance thing is the eldest son gets the land and and then that passes on through the generation, the land stays intact and that's really important. But for Catholic inheritors, what happens is it has to be divided between all the sons or all the daughters, if there's no sons. So what what the Protestant ascendancy are trying to do is break up the land so that Irish Catholics can't dominate or can't ever get back in power. So it's a pretty restrictive place for Irish Catholics to be. And this story is mostly going to unfold in Dublin, although it's not where it starts. This is a wealthy colonial capital, but only for some. So in the same way as London is.
7:21 Speaker 01 It is the second largest city in the British Empire at this time after London, of course. And we're dealing with, you know, incredible Georgian streets, which you can still come and visit in Dublin there. They are incredible. When I'm staying in Dublin, if I'm home, I stay on Henrietta Street and it is just the centre of the Georgian world back in the 18th century. And we have theatres, coffee houses, elegant townhouses. But of course, this prosperity is is only concentrated amongst certain of the ruling elite. And so that's Dublin and we have this kind of social mix going on and it's brilliant, it's lively, it's colourful. But at the same time, it has this kind of downtrodden side for people like Peg.
8:00 Speaker 01 She's coming in, a lot of poverty, a lot of struggle. And and this is the world that Peg eventually comes into, but it's not where she's from.
8:07 Kate Lister? Tell us, where does Peg come from?
8:09 Speaker 01 Well, she is born Margaret Plunkett, we do know this.
8:13 Kate Lister? Oh, she really is a Plunkett, that wasn't a a stage name.
8:17 Speaker 01 She, well, hmm, interesting. From what we can tell, yes, yes, she is a Plunkett. She was born in County Westmeath, which isn't Too far from Dublin and she is supposedly, she says herself, born in seventeen twenty seven. Now, this is where the question marks start to arise. Her lifespan is given officially a seventeen twenty seven to seventeen ninety seven. The main source of information we have for Peg Plunkett or Mrs. Leeson, as we'll come to know her throughout this episode, is given to us through her memoirs, right? But we cannot get the memoirs to match up chronologically with a lifespan. It doesn't make any sense.
9:02 Speaker 01 So we have seventeen twenty seven as the birth date. Some people say it's seventeen thirty six and some people say it's seventeen forty two. Scholars that have actually researched the life in depth. I don't really know where to make the call, to be honest, Kate, because she says seventeen twenty seven. So therefore I want to lean towards seventeen twenty seven. But it doesn't make sense in the course of her life that she would be born in seventeen twenty seven. And we know she died in seventeen ninety seven, so we know the end date is true.
9:28 Kate Lister? Right.
9:28 Speaker 01 So it's very disputed, but anyway, look, that's there.
9:30 Kate Lister? She wouldn't be the first sex worker to change her age though, but it's slightly odd she'd make herself older.
9:35 Speaker 01 Well, I'm not a sex worker and I've changed my age quite recently. I was talking to somebody literally this weekend and they were just like, what age are you? And I was like forty two and they were like, wait, you told me that you were thirty eight. I was like, maybe I did, yes, at some point, but I'm not, I'm forty two and that's what we're going with. So and that's true because now it's on Wikipedia. Somebody very cleverly put my actual date of birth on Wikipedia, so I can't deny it anymore.
9:57 Kate Lister? Bastards, right, okay.
9:59 Speaker 01 But anyway, yeah, look, so she's, something is going on there with this with, and we'll come back to this, we'll talk about it. But her, her family's place in Irish society is pretty decent. She's one of eight surviving children of a man named Matthew Plunkett, who's a wealthy farmer and a woman whose first name we don't know, but she's Miss A O'Reilly. And we are told by Peg herself later in her life that Miss A O'Reilly has connections related also of the Earl of Cavan, no less.
10:24 Kate Lister? Oh, did she now?
10:25 Speaker 01 But we can't prove that in any way, shape or form. Now, she is Catholic, so I told you about the different restrictions that are put on 18th century Irish Catholics. But the family, it seems, converted to Protestantism in order to retain the land that wasn't wholly unusual. But they were secretly still practicing Catholics. So, you know, it's a tumultuous time politically. They are trying to navigate their way through that. But as so often happens, just in life generally, things start to fall apart within the family following the death of her mother. Because her father is then incapacitated and Pegg has to deal really with her brother Christopher becoming the head of the family. And he is abusive.
11:08 Speaker 01 He is physically abusive as well as very controlling. So we have two accounts where she is landed in bed by his physical abuse. Either for up to 10 weeks in one instance and then three months in another instance. Yeah, yeah. So we're talking about really serious abuse here. And it seems to track because that same kind of abuse carries through into some of the other girls, his other sisters. So he's a real fucking shit, like it's, you know, bad what's going on there. And he has a real control issue because the girls are quite marriageable in 18th century terms. But he is picky and choosy as to which ones he lets marry because he is now.
11:50 Speaker 01 The father is still alive, interestingly, but he's incapacitated. As I say, we're not sure how that has presented itself. We're not sure why he's not running the farm himself and the lands and the money. But the brother is withholding dowries and, you know, Pegg definitely, yeah. Pegg definitely had the option for respectable marriage. It was there. There was one guy who, listen, this is how 18th century marriage often goes. He was an elderly shopkeeper and he was lovely. She says he was nice and he was a nice guy. He wasn't particularly good looking or anything. She wasn't fancy, she didn't fancy him, but it was certainly there. There was another guy who she did really, really fancy. And as a matter of fact, it went to breach of promise because he went off and had a child with somebody else. But he did offer to marry her before all this happened, but the.
12:34 Speaker 01 The brother withheld withheld the dowry, so they couldn't get married. So she's trapped in this really abusive family dynamic. And and we think that that bit is true. We we are not sure about the connections to the Earl of Cavan. They must have been somewhat wealthy enough to, you know, comfortable kind of middle class, I guess. But it's a bad situation.
12:54 Kate Lister? Isn't she one of like 22 children?
12:56 Speaker 01 Yes, there is a thought that she was one of about 22, but only eight survive. But that number comes from her and we can't verify that number at all.
13:06 Kate Lister? It's not the highest I've heard, like it's a lot, but I've heard more.
13:08 Speaker 01 No, no, Irish Catholics will will give you a run for your money when it comes to it. But not me personally, but other people. And it just, it it really says something about, and bear this in mind as we go through this kind of self mythologizing that's happening with Peg's story. I'm not talking about the abuse, I'm talking about that 22 children thing where, you know, it's this vast army almost, and then only eight of them survive. And when we come to talk about Peg's own children, we find something very similar where it's really difficult to know which children she's talking about, how many children she had, who she had them with. And in certain instances, as we'll see towards the end of this story, if she even had them at all. I mean, we know she had some children, but we can't be so sure. So this is the background that she's coming from.
13:52 Speaker 01 It's pretty grim, even if there is money there, which there seems to be, it's very, very grim. And her her instinct for survival, both physically and spiritually and, and, you know, wanting more for herself is definitely there. She definitely has that. And so that's why we're drawn to her, right? Because she has this instinct to survive.
14:15 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Anthony and Peg after this short break.
14:26 Kate Lister? Hello, Betwixters. I am jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.
15:08 Kate Lister? So what happens then? She's living with this asshole brother who's pulling strings to prevent her from getting married, which is, that's, you know, that was a pretty good deal if you were a middle-class impoverished girl in Ireland or anywhere at this time is to marry someone who had a shop and that was kind of you done. But that's not going to happen. So how does she go from this situation to where she ends up?
15:30 Speaker 01 Well, she, she has this thing where she's like, I need to go home. I can't go home. I need to go home. I can't go home. And finally, she's, you know, she's down on her luck and she's, she's, she's stayed with relatives and then that all kind of runs out and the respectable thing to do, even if it's not the safe thing to do, is to go home. So she tries to go home, but Christopher doesn't take her back. He won't let her back into the house.
15:51 Kate Lister? So she's basically sofa surfing with relatives.
15:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, more or less. And he really focuses on Peg, by the way, as well as the other sisters, but on Pegs particularly, he's like, you're a troublemaker. You're not coming back into this house. And so she essentially gets kicked out and she goes to, you know, it's very similar to what you'd hear in, in, in an English history. She goes to the big city. She goes to Dublin to try and, and make something.
16:11 Kate Lister? Make something.
16:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. Now, we don't know exactly what age she is at this point. We don't know the dates exactly, but we think realistically, she's probably mid to late teens or early twenties, because she's had a bit of a life. She's had marriage proposals come in. We know the first marriage proposal that she had was when she was 14, which is shocking to us, but not necessarily that unusual in the context of the early 18th century. But she arrives in Dublin in the, a time, as I say, that was, you know, full and busy and exciting. We have taverns and theatres and lodging houses. And then we have this idea that sex work and entertainment are overlapping with those more regulated establishments. So we have the bars that are regulated and that they have their, their permits and we
16:54 Speaker 01 have the ones that don't. And that's often where the most fun entertainment is happening. It's also where sex workers are often working from. And in her memoir, she describes this kind of progression when she arrives to Dublin first, where she's in precarious lodgings. So she's kind of making do as much as she can. And, you know, she's being a A date basically for men of a certain class, but very middle in class. And then we start to see relatively quickly this rise to more comfortable quarters. Her income improves, the addresses are better. So what we're finding is she's making her way in this commercial heart of the city. She is becoming part of that commercial heart and she's making it work for her because she's savvy.
17:36 Speaker 01 She's business minded. She she knows what she has in terms of her own commodification.
17:41 Kate Lister? Is she selling sex at this point?
17:43 Speaker 01 So she's selling companionship. We know that. She says she's not selling sex necessarily, but the likelihood is she probably is. I I think in terms of 18th century sex work, we don't see this delineation between a companion for dates and outings and sex work very clearly. No, so it's probably likely that she is, although in her memoirs, she she doesn't make that explicit. But once we know that she's moved up into that world of sex worker to what we term as the courtesan, then she is more explicit about the fact that sex work is involved in what she is doing. So she now has private apartments. So these men from the upper middle and even gentry apparently are giving her private quarters. She has a set of regular patrons.
18:27 Speaker 01 So just to make clear, often when we talk about a courtesan, it is an exclusive courtesianship. So I will only go with the lord of wherever, or I will only be his mistress. But in Peg's case, we don't have that same exclusivity, although certain men do try to ask her to provide that for them. She doesn't feel safe, and I don't necessarily mean physically, although I'm sure that comes into it too. Financially, she finds that too precarious, even if in the short term it will give her even more power. But she's like, ah, if you turn your back on me, I need to have two or three other people going at the same time. And she does, yeah. And it gives her a little bit of financial independence to have that, to have that that kind of ensemble of people that she's working with.
19:12 Speaker 01 This is where people start to notice her and where she starts to appear in other sources apart from her own memoirs. So this is where we can corroborate some of what she's saying. She's definitely well known. Particularly well liked by a lot of people across the, you know, you might think there is judgment going on here. And there is to a certain extent in certain quarters, but overall amongst the people in the entertainment quarter, in the sex work quarter, and even at elite parts of society are up for a bit of crack. Peg is the person you want to be around. She's one of the girls that you want to be around and she, she has this security, although it's really important in Peg's story to bear in mind that that security that she does earn is never permanently secure. It can go so, so quickly. So it's, and it does.
19:56 Kate Lister? Thing in it. This is, cause it's all, if you're going to be a professional paid mistress, like you can make bank with that. But as you say, it's all dependent on the man still wanting to fund you, fund your lifestyle. And you've got to be very careful with that stuff.
20:11 Speaker 01 Yeah. And as I said to you before, there are men who come in and you're like, no, you're exclusive to me. And one of those people was a Mr. Leeson. Now, this is a person that Peg names herself in the memoirs and it's, it's really important, I think, and it's really interesting to remember that Peg is writing this, or it's been written on her behalf. Again, we'll come back to that. And she chooses to name some people by their real names and others not. And historians have had a really tough time trying to decipher who's real and who isn't. So apparently we have a wealthy merchant called Mr. Leeson. Now we can't quite pin that down, but historians think she may be referring to Joseph Leeson, who was the second Earl of Milltown.
20:53 Speaker 01 Now, when you're talking prominent in Dublin, in 18th century Dublin society, there ain't many more prominent than Joseph Leeson.
21:02 Kate Lister? Okay, he's, he's swinging big dicks.
21:04 Speaker 01 He is swinging his own big dick wherever he wants to be swinging it. And he is, he is essentially shaping 18th century Dublin in, in building terms, in money terms, in sociability terms. He is one of the, the makers, right? And he asks for exclusivity through her and, and because of his, if it is the second Earl of Milltown. And there's a reason to believe that it is because she restyles herself as Mrs. Leeson. At this point, not unusual for courtesans to do that. They want to show who their patron is essentially. Because it gives them power, it gives them status. And she's rebranding herself. Now, think about this in terms of businesswoman.
21:46 Speaker 01 And the agency, however limited it might have been for women in the 18th century, and particularly maybe sex workers in the 18th century. She's using what agency she has. She's now marketing herself as well as providing service, as well as being able to make decent book. She's now marketing and using publicity to get a name out there that she is Mrs. Leeson. She is moving at that level of society now. So this looks good, but she hasn't let some of the other regulars go. I think she kept two on. It's unclear exactly, but I think there was two other men she kind of kept on in the background. And it was a good thing she did because Leeson becomes very jealous because he gets to find out about these other two guys.
22:28 Speaker 01 And he, it ends in a big blow up, a big bust up, and he wants nothing more to do with her. She's kicked out of her apartments that he's paying for. And it all kind of, it all kinds of falls apart. So it does go to show. Listen, if, if, if it was the second Earl of Milltown, of course, she's going to take this position. Of course, she's going to provide the service where she can. But she's also smart enough to know, I cannot rely on this. I'm not just giving this over. So I'm going to keep the others on in the background. And it turns out she was right because this is the, she, she knows the inevitability of what's about to happen, even when she's attached to, to Leeson. So she's a smart cookie.
23:05 Kate Lister? I think one of the things I really like about Peg's story, again, if it's true, because you, you've got to be careful with all this stuff. But she doesn't, there's no sense of shame with this. There's no sense of like, oh, maybe I shouldn't be doing it. Which sort of very much stands in opposition to 80th century, 90th century narratives around people selling sex now. They should be ashamed and fallen women out of terrible. She honestly doesn't seem to give much of a fuck about this. Like, didn't she even take clients to court who were violent to her?
23:33 Speaker 01 She did, and we'll, we'll come to that in just a second. But just to say, in terms of the 18th century, at this particular point, like, let's say the 1720s. This is the time of the Reformation for. The society for the reformation of manners and they are going around absolute dry arses and they're doing exactly what you are saying. I just, they were doing it in Molly Houses in London and they were doing it, they had branches in Dublin too. And they're doing exactly what you just said, moralizing, hand wringing, oh, these, these terrible
24:01 Kate Lister? They're the moral police, basically, but very dangerous. Like, they weren't just going around tutting at people. They were instigating raids into gay subculture and targeting people selling sex and making sure that they were prosecuted. They were really nasty, these people.
24:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's that thing of going, and we hear it today, right? This Christian morality as the spine of action. And actually, what they're doing is incredibly cruel, incredibly divisive, incredibly dehumanizing to so many people. And this is all done in the name of Christianity. And that's certainly what's happening around now. Peg doesn't fall suspect to that herself, to that society. But she is arrested a couple of times, but because of her high connections, nothing ever comes of it. But we see her pop up in the record every now and again, again. So we know she's existing, but she, she always seems to get away with stuff. But this is where that legal case that you're talking about starts to come in. Because once the Earl of Milltown says, right, out of my apartments, she has no other choice but to set up with
24:59 Speaker 01 another courtesan who must have found herself also kicked out or whatever it was. But her name was Sally Hayes. And together, they came, again, this, you know, this business sense, they come together and they go, right, we've reached that level now of courtesieship where we've had the major patrons. Now we need to do something that's a little bit more for us. And they set up a house of their own on Drogheda Street, which will cater for upper middle class to elite men. It's an organized establishment. It is right at the heart of Dublin's social district. The women there are paid to live on the premises, well, they receive part of money from the income that they generate themselves. So it's not that they're paid by Peg, but you know, they get a percentage of what they earn. But they are also due to Peg on Peg and Sally
25:44 Speaker 01 for their food, for clothing, and for most of all, protection. She does create this measure of security and community that maybe she was missing when she had to kind of find this way on her own. Now, she's by no means the first person that's opening what was termed a brothel at that point, but she's definitely doing it in a more organised way. She has a public reputation. As a businesswoman, she is appearing in contemporary satirical writing and other people are, you know, talking about her, but she is a recognised figure in Dublin's demi-monde. She, I mean, it's fair to say, I think, that she's notorious rather than famous, or, but she's certainly not anonymous, you know, she
26:24 Speaker 01 knows she has a place in Dublin society. So let's talk about that legal case that you mentioned, because it is, I think this is the, I think this is why we're left with a memory of Peg. I think had she been a normal sex worker, a courtesan, and had she run a house, we might not, there was women doing that, but because of this, this is how we remember her. So she is in her house that she shared with Sally Hayes on Drogheda Street, and there was, and she was closing down for the night. She was, essentially, the way it kind of looks in the source material is that she was sitting down by the fire for the night. The windows had been closed over, the fire was on, there was a few candles going.
27:08 Speaker 01 There's this real sense of relaxation that she gives, that, you know, I've done my day's work, I'm about to close in. There was a group of privileged, rich men that Peg refers to as the Pinking Dindies. Now, we think that that is the Pinking Dandies, you know, it's what we're trying to, I think what they're trying to do there shows Peg's accent, that she had this very kind of thick Irish accent, so they call them the Pinking Dindies. And they are a loose group of upper-class young men in 18th century Dublin, sons of the Protestant elite, so there's this ascendancy I talked about at the beginning. They're at Trinity College, which is like Oxford or Cambridge in Ireland. They're officers and gentlemen,
27:49 Speaker 01 and they have time, and, Kate, they have money to waste. And, I mean, things never change, do they? And the way they do that is by interfering with People they see as beneath them. So they're famous for.
28:02 Kate Lister? What a nice group of people.
28:03 Speaker 01 I mean, think, think, I suppose, think Bullingdon.
28:06 Kate Lister? Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking about of just like, we're rich, we're a bit bored and we're assholes. So we're gonna go and pick on people.
28:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, and we're gonna pick on the people that are vulnerable potentially, as far as we see them, drinking, rioting. Interestingly, they had a habit of attacking brothels specifically, although they also used brothels. So it's this, it's this strange thing that they're doing to themselves. Yeah. Historians basically feel, and it adds up, right? The historians have said in the past that they just saw themselves above the law. And of course they did. That, that's exactly what we're doing. So the night of this particular, we know we're in seventeen seventy nine. We don't have an exact date, but we're in seventeen seventy nine now. What I want you to bear in mind is if Peg was born, when she says she was born in seventeen twenty seven, she would have been fifty two at this point, right?
28:54 Kate Lister? Okay.
28:54 Speaker 01 And that makes sense in terms of where she would be socially now and what she would have achieved and that she would be running a house of her own. But then there's some elements of this story that don't quite make sense, but we'll, we'll come to it. Some of it is definitely true though. So it's the evening, some evening, we don't know when, in seventeen seventy nine, and the dindies are heard out around Drahada Street. They are causing havoc and Peg knows they're coming for her because they know they attack brothels and so she's preparing herself. They smash in the door, they smash down all the windows. That's her evening, you know, her quiet, peaceful evening that she was planning on going. They vandalize all her furniture and they assault the women that they find there while they're terrorizing the neighborhood.
29:37 Speaker 01 And they also assault Peg. Now, Peg gives a really pretty intense account of the violence in her, in her memoir. And you can read that for free online, by the way, so it's, it's, it's worth having a look over. It's, it's easy to read. It's quite digestible. And one of the things to bear in mind at this point. If Peg is fifty two, she says that she was pregnant during this attack. And that as a result of this attack, later on, when she gave birth, she gave birth to a stillborn child. But there is also an account that says that didn't happen, but that there was a child within
30:17 Speaker 01 the house who was murdered as a part of the tensions and the violence and the abuse that was going on in there. So there's something going on with a child that dies because of this. Either way, it's utterly tragic. And we know that the person at the head of this gang of idiots is a man named Richard Crosby. Now, if you Google Richard Crosby or go on the Irish Dictionary of Biography, whatever it's called, you will maybe know this name already because he is an aeronautical triumph in eighteenth century Ireland. He is the first Irishman to make a manned balloon flight. And that's why he's famous.
30:58 Speaker 01 But he is arrested for this because, as you say, Peg pushes that he cannot be allowed to get away with this. She is not the first person to do this, by the way. She's not even the first sex worker to do this. Other sex workers had done it. But she, she really uses her notoriety to make sure it's a high, it's a high profile event when she does this, so people know about it. She takes him to court. We don't have the court documents. The court documents are very, very scatty, but we do know what happened and we do know he was taken and we do know she brought the case against him. So we have the bare minimum. There is no mention in the official court documents about murder or the death of another child. That doesn't appear there. It's only in Peg's memoir and then in something else that's written much later.
31:41 Speaker 01 So that's where the confusion comes around that. Historians question whether or not Peg could have been pregnant if she was fifty two, and that's why some historians have said, well.
31:49 Kate Lister? Unlikely.
31:50 Speaker 01 Not impossible, but it's unlikely, right? Yeah. And so that's why historians have moved her date of birth. I don't know if we should do that, to be honest. I think if she tells us it's seventeen twenty seven, we have to go with seventeen twenty seven. I don't think we can, like, retrospectively. Go, actually, it'll make more sense if she was born in seventeen forty six. So we'll just say seventeen forty six. You know what I mean? Like, even if there's a few things that might help, you know? And and this is one of the instances that they use to say, well, actually, she could only have been around this age when this happened. So she was probably born then.
32:19 Kate Lister? Also been lying for dramatic effect.
32:20 Speaker 01 She could. And and I know that sounds really harsh. And and people were saying, but why would you not believe that she had lost this child? Or there was a child lost? And we'll talk about this as a kind of a rounding up thing, maybe at the end. But the the nature of eighteenth century memoir writing is exactly that. It's it's to give adventure story. It's to pull at the heartstrings. It's not about truth.
32:48 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Anthony and Peg after this short break.
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33:59 Kate Lister? Peg's memoirs is one of a series of, they were called harlotographies, of where infamous sex workers, there was Charlotte Hayes, there was Harriet Wilson, and they all published their memoirs. And what do you want from a notorious character's memoirs? You want them to be notorious. So they're not being sold for being factual and accurate. They're being sold for the story that they tell.
34:22 Speaker 01 And while there's truths smattered in there, and actually you and I've spoken about this before, because we've spoken about the memoirs of the Chevalier Dion, and that is a good 90% not true. And it's more easily factually checked because the Chevalier was more famous than Peg was. But the memoir writing is, as you say, it's adventure story. And Peg is benefiting from that too, by the way, because she's getting paid to sell these memoirs. So, you know, she's not necessarily a victim of this invention. She's part of it. But definitely, there was a case. She won the case. Crosby, go Peg. Crosby was imprisoned. However, there was some kind of an exchange that happened between Peg and Crosby, and
35:05 Speaker 01 they ended on pretty decent terms. She shook his hand and essentially forgave him. He was let out early anyway, because, you know, of his social status and all that kind of a thing. It seems unlikely to me that if there had been an infanticide, or that a child had been killed in utero, that she would have been happy enough to just turn around and shake his hand and be like, let's just get on with it.
35:26 Kate Lister? I think that that may have been some creative licence to have made that particular assault seem even more horrendous.
35:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. And that's not to say there were not assaults, and that they didn't have. And here's the thing, this assault changed Peg's life. This marks a real turning point in her career. And I think it makes more sense that she is older because of what happens next. So because of the demolition that happens, well, demolition is a strong word, the bricks and mortar are still standing, but because of the chaos that happens within the house on Drogheda Street, Peg and Sally have to move their establishment elsewhere. And what keeps happening is they keep having to move it. Now, any business will kind of tell you, that's not good for business, because, you know, you can be forgotten about, you
36:13 Speaker 01 can easily just get lost. They go to Wood Street, and then Pitt Street, which is, if you know Dublin, on the site of the Westbury Hotel today. So, these are still good locations, but... It's, you know, the moving around is not necessarily great for business. And so we see that this is a turning point for her. Things become far more precarious, even though she has her own business. It's starting to lose money. You know, I suppose there's an element, and this is conjecture on my behalf, but you know, it's worth saying, I suppose. She's taken this man to court, this powerful man to court. I suppose, what do you think, Aidan? If that gives you a reputation going, oh, we, maybe we can't trust her as much as we used to anymore?
36:54 Kate Lister? Entirely possible, I think. I mean, there's a few things that are going on here is she's probably discovering what a lot of people do when they're selling sex, which is that you peak quite early. And then, you know, life experience and things kick in and you're getting a bit older and, you know, every trash can has its lid, but by and large is the market is for younger people. And if she's getting into her 50s and beyond by this point, and of course, then you're tired and your knees are giving out and all the rest of it. So like the client pool starts to dry up and you've got to try and move into brothel keeping itself. And if she has a reputation as somebody that is willing to press charges, somebody that has a connection with the police. I don't think that would be great for business.
37:37 Kate Lister? I can't imagine clients going, yeah, let's definitely go here.
37:41 Speaker 01 And here's the thing, that's such a good point because I suppose if she had been, sadly, if she had been 30 and taken that case, they might have been still like, yeah, but she's still an absolute right. I'm still gonna go over to, you know. But then because of, as you say, every bin of the lid, and I've never heard that saying, but I very much enjoy it. That, and you know, if we're.
38:01 Kate Lister? There's always a market.
38:02 Speaker 01 There's always a market, absolutely. Let's say she is 52 when that attack happens and let's say she moves three times then thereafter. So let's say by the time she, she comes to that last place, she's probably 60 or in her 60s. And so what it's described to is as, as she starts to retire. So it makes sense in terms of what you're saying, there's a retirement, you know, coming in. So she retires to this place that's now very bougie, but at the time would have been grand, like not bad, but it's, it's called Black Rock. And she is hard up for cash at this point. It's, it's hand to mouth now. And she sells her memoirs. No. To make money. Yeah. And again, but I love this for her because it's that same thing. It's it's when, you know, when you leave a girl band, as I have so often done, when you leave a girl band,
38:47 Speaker 01 you write the memoir, don't you? You write the biography and you you get your million quid deal and you do whatever you do. So she's just using what's at her disposal to see her through a comfortable retirement in that sense. And I admire that from her. Maybe this is a good time to talk a little bit more about those memoirs, like we were saying, in terms of how Apeg may not have actually written this herself. She may have sold the rights, essentially. It didn't work in the same way, but given permission for it to happen and fed the information to somebody. She may have partially written them, or she may have entirely written them herself. We don't know. She was definitely literate, so she could have had. But one of the things to point out here is that if somebody is after Peg's memoirs, it means she is important enough, she's well known enough, and she's famous enough and interesting enough
39:32 Speaker 01 for people to want to read what she has to say. So she has a status still, despite the penury and despite all of that. She still has a place in society. But as you were saying earlier, Kate, this is reconstructed conversations, altered timelines. And we definitely see that in Peg's story and heightened dramas to make this this story engaging. It is seen as a literary production. And even the people who would have been reading them at the time understood what the exchange was. They knew that this was was part of the gig. Although part of the fun was, well, which bits are true, though? Like, who's Mr. Leeson, actually? Or who's this other guy? Or like, because they're they're they know there's going to be true things there, but they just have to kind of decipher that for themselves. And it's not necessarily always very straightforward.
40:18 Speaker 01 But that is that is the main thrust of Peg's life. Now, the weird thing about it is she looms relatively large in Irish history still. That is true. Like, we know when it comes to the 18th century. Yeah, yeah, people know who Peg Plunkett is. And and, you know, if they don't, they know who Mrs. Leeson is. So we have that kind of idea of who she might be. But I think it says something about how unclear the Irish 18th century is. And she really personifies that in many ways. And as a result, though. Somebody needs to make this biography because you can do what you like with it.
40:53 Kate Lister? Yes, that is true.
40:54 Speaker 01 Because she did.
40:55 Kate Lister? That is true. You could do anything that you want.
40:57 Speaker 01 You could, you could historical novel, whatever it is. And I feel like that would be part of Peg's legacy because she was doing the same thing herself. But what I admire most about her, I think, is her business savvy, her intellect, her ability to make the best of a fucking shit situation.
41:16 Kate Lister? Hmm.
41:17 Speaker 01 That is admirable.
41:18 Kate Lister? Was it a big hit, her memoirs?
41:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, there was a few, there was a few additions.
41:22 Kate Lister? Yeah, big success.
41:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. And as I say, it keeps going into the 19th century and it drops off a little bit into 20th century, but it's having a bit of a resurgence. Again, as I say, it's free online. You can listen to the audiobook version of it. The historical analysis of her by historians has a finite use because there are so few documents beyond her memoirs that it's a bit like, oh God, I don't know what's going on. So.
41:46 Kate Lister? We know she was real.
41:47 Speaker 01 We know she was real. We do know she was real. We know she was a courtesan. We know there was a case. So the pillars are certainly true. It's the decoration that she adds around it is brilliant and good for her.
42:01 Kate Lister? If you were being paid to write a memoir of your book and you had to like recollect to an argument you had 40, 30 years ago, I, I'll put my hands up. I would absolutely trash the other person. I would make it up entirely. I'm sure that I would.
42:15 Speaker 01 And also because you would have been in the right, of course.
42:17 Kate Lister? Of course I'd have been in the right.
42:19 Speaker 01 So, you know, it doesn't really make a difference if you're making it up, but still, it's still the right thing to do. Yeah. I don't know. Nobody's going to ever ask me for my memoir. It'd be so boring. But like, if they did, I'd make it up, I guess. Yeah.
42:30 Kate Lister? But you'd have to like spice it up a bit, wouldn't you?
42:32 Speaker 01 Oh, I'd really have to. It'd be so boring.
42:35 Kate Lister? That's not true. That's not true. He's not boring. But do you know what happened to Peg after she had her literary smash? Did she get to retire and put her feet up in a nice old folks home or?
42:45 Speaker 01 No, no, she didn't. I mean, it wasn't, listen, it wasn't terribly bad. It was, as you might expect, bad. She had kept the brothel for years. As we know, she became, things became increasingly precarious. She had that fall from grace. She had the case. And then we know that she died in and out of poverty and illness. She had been imprisoned a couple of times for death, although people always came to a rescue for that. And she died, we know she died in 1797. I had a look for this because I was like, oh, go on. Let's see if I can find out where she was buried. And I can't really find anything. And I think that says something about maybe this maybe Peg's real legacy is this literary invention that she has that she has invented
43:30 Speaker 01 around herself because the reality of her life kind of dissipates. And you know what as well, Kate, as I'm chatting to hear about it, maybe she was giving people a bit of a gift as well. Like, she was known for the crack in her day. And that's what she wanted to leave people with, a bit of crack. Because actually, the reality of what she would have experienced would have been tough as nails.
43:51 Kate Lister? Yes, it would. A lot of time. And that's not what the audience want to hear from those kind of memoirs. They just don't.
43:57 Speaker 01 And so she she gifts that, I guess, as the last thing. And so we lose trace of her, but we know she was in and out of prison for death. But again, I suppose it's important to point out that for somebody of her class at this during her retirement, it's not necessarily all that unusual that that might happen. And she had friends that would not family mind, but she had friends that came to a rescue of those people who may have been patrons in the past, or other girls who maybe were aware of her reputation. We don't actually know. But she certainly wasn't able to afford to get herself out. And she was taken out of the prison because the the debts would be paid. And we're not talking huge debts here. We're talking food debts. We're talking clothing debts. We're talking, you know, rental debts. We're talking the very basics. And so, yeah, and so she kind of disappears after
44:39 Speaker 01 that. So she doesn't go out in a blaze of glory. But, as I say, the legacy is brilliant and glittering and fantastic and fun and camp and all of those things and sexy. And so maybe maybe she wants us to have that version of her end, rather than maybe what actually happened.
44:56 Kate Lister? I think that's true. Oh, Anthony, you've been so much fun to talk to. I knew that you would be. If people want to know more about, don't listen to him, he's loads of slurs.
45:06 Speaker 01 Because any day could just take a turn for the worst.
45:08 Kate Lister? Don't listen to him. He's fabulous fun. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?
45:14 Speaker 01 Well, they can head on over there to Good Old After Dark and listen to the old stuff that we do over there. I've heard of us. Yeah, no, I've been around us a couple of times.
45:21 Kate Lister? Rather mild.
45:22 Speaker 01 And then you can find me on social media at Anthony Delaney History.
45:27 Kate Lister? Well, will you come back and tell us more? Scandalous history another time because we have so much fun when you're here.
45:32 Speaker 01 Of course I will. And you know what? We should do it in a pub or something. We should get ourselves an owl drink.
45:36 Kate Lister? I think so. I think so. History hit down the pub.
45:40 Speaker 01 The producers are now going, Anthony, stop saying stuff that you know we can't make happen. We can't do recording.
45:46 Kate Lister? We can make that happen. That's you, me, a pint and a recorder. That is easily done, that one. Right. Well, until then, thank you so much. You've been marvelous.
45:56 Speaker 01 Thanks for having me.
46:00 Kate Lister? Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Anthony for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is you get your podcasts. Coming up, we have got an episode on just how filthy were the Victorians and the first in our brand new mini series of history's worst ever breakups. Starting with none other than Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Of course, of course they're there. They don't get much worse than that. Or do they? But if you want us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected] . This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.
46:38 Kate Lister? Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
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