Miss MacDonald's Fancy a dance from 1808

Goulding’s Select Collection of Twelve Favorite Country Dances for the year 1808, published by Goulding, Phipps and D’Almaine

Goulding & Co, a firm of music publishers, sellers and instrument makers, was created in 1785 by George Goulding.

Thomas D'Almaine (c.1784-1866) and Phipps joined George Goulding's existing company in 1789. The company was subsequently known as Goulding, Knevett & Co (1803-1816 in Dublin), Goulding & D'Almaine, or Goulding, D'Almaine & Co. and several other varieties(until 1823). They entered a partnership with James Wood and Potter. The firm specialised in woodwind instruments and pianos. The name changed in 1834 to D'Almaine & Co. In 1847, D'Almaine retired to be succeeded by his nephew Thomas Macinklay, who had joined the firm in 1840. In 1866, D'Almaine and Mackinlay died, effectively ending the company's operations. The firm's name continued until 1934 under different patronage, mainly producing pianos.

This great firm was commenced initially by George Goulding, who was probably in business before 1784. He issued sheet songs from the pantomime of Don Juan, acted in 1787, and other sheet music prior to and contemporary with this.

His address at this time was at “The Haydn’s Head, No. 6. James Street, Covent Garden,” and shortly afterwards, an additional one at 17 Great Turnstile, Holborn. About 1790, this latter gave place to one at 113 Bishopsgate Street, but while keeping his principal place of business in James Street, these two latter addresses must have been only in force for a short time.

From James Street, he issued annual sets of twenty-four dances in oblong octavo. One of these is for 1792, and on it is advertised a collection by Mr Carter for the year 1788. Another yearly set of dances from James Street is for 1797. Early in 1799, he moved to 45 Pall Mall and took others into partnership.

The new firm was styled Goulding & Co., or Goulding, Phipps, & D’Almaine, and they became music sellers to the Prince and Princess of Wales. In 1803, they took additional premises at 76 St. James Street, and in 1804-5, they gave both these addresses up and removed them to 117 New Bond Street, with an agency at 7 Westmoreland Street., Dublin.

In 1808-9, the number in New Bond Street was changed to 124. Phipps retired from the concern about this time and probably commenced business on his own account. The firm was now Goulding, D’Almaine, & Potter.

At the end of 1811, they removed their London address to 20 Soho Square, and 124 Samuel Chappell took the shop at New Bond Street. The firm remained at 20 Soho Square till 1858. Sometime between 1830 and 1837, Goulding’s name was dropped from the firm, which was then D’Almaine & Co., and in 1838, they advertised a catalogue of 200,000 engraved plates.

In late years, the name of the firm was D’Almaine & Mackinlay, and in 1867, the whole stock and plates were sold off by auction, owing to the death of Mr D’Almaine, which occurred in 1866 in his 83rd or 84th year.

The Darker Side of the Assemblies - The Sex Trade

Walcot Street, Avon Street and the Holloway district of Bath were notorious as centres of the sex trade.

Such was the problem that in 1713, the Corporation agreed on building a constables' prison in the Market Place to secure night walkers and other disorderly persons.

The famous courtesan Fanny Murray was born in Bath around 1729. Orphaned at age 12, she worked as a flower girl until she was seduced by John Spencer, a grandson of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. According to her memoir, she had become a mistress to Beau Nash by 1743, at the age of just fourteen, and soon moved to London, where she became an indentured prostitute. [1]

In August 1779, the clergyman James Woodford noted in his diary how he met two "common prostitutes" one aged about 15, the other17, as he walked in the fields around Bath.

Many young girls came from the country to Bath and other cities in search of employment. Once they discovered that jobs were not always easy to come by and only those living in the city for five years were eligible for Poor Law relief, they were easy prey to brothel keepers.

This was such a common fate that even Jane Austen alluded to it in correspondence with her family in a letter dated 18th September 1796, written to her sister Cassandra. Jane Austen makes this remark, referring to her plans to visit the Pearsons, the family of Henry Austen’s then-fiancée, unaccompanied:

“I had once determined to go with Frank tomorrow and take my chance, etc., but they dissuaded me from so rash a step-as I really think on consideration it would have been: for if the Pearson’s were not at home I should inevitably fall sacrifice to the arts of some fat Woman who would make me drunk with small beer…” [2]

She is referring to the first picture of Hogarth’s series “The Harlots Progress”, which portrayed the arrival in London of an innocent country girl who is befriended by, in Jane Austen’s own words, “a fat Woman.” This was none other than one of the most notorious procuresses of the Georgian era, Elizabeth “Mother” Needham.

Sex workers plied their trade in all the places of public amusement – the theatre, outside the Assembly Rooms and pleasure gardens, and in the vicinity of local inns. Once a customer had been found, he could be taken to any number of local houses.

In her novel Persuasion, Jane Austen chose the White Hart Inn as the setting for Captain Wentworth’s proposal to Anne Elliot. The White Hart was a well-known Bath inn, and the stables at the rear were particularly popular with local sex workers. Mary Musgrove enjoys looking out the window at the White Hart spies, Mrs. Clay and William Elliot. Mrs. Clay is about to elope, and he is trying to ‘buy’ her services so that she won’t marry Sir Walter Elliot.

Garrick writing from Bath in the 1790s says in passing “I have gain’d two inches in the waist, & the Girls at Night call me Fatty!” 

John Skinner, rector of Camerton near Bath at the start of the nineteenth century, recorded in his journal, ‘I was not a little astonished, as I walked through Bath, to observe the streets so crowded with prostitutes, some of them apparently not above 14 or 15 years of age’.

 In 1802, the Society for the Suppression of Vice was formed. One of its objects was ‘the Protection of Female Innocence, by the Punishment of Procurers and Seducers’.

In 1805, the Female Penitentiary and Lock Hospital was established in Walcot Street, some of the building still exists, to rescue 'fallen' women and treat venereal disease.

One local paper estimated that in the 1820s, there were 300 sex workers in Avon Street alone.

In 1825, the Reverent Skinner recorded:

March 21: I was occupied in visiting the sick in Colliers Row. Mrs Biven seems going very fast. This woman, now at the point of death, is the eldest daughter of Sarah Somer of Red Hill, and has been a prostitute from her earliest years; her mother brought her up in the vocation, as she has done all her daughters.

1. Queen of the Courtesans: Fanny Murray 2nd June 2014 by Barbara White

2. Osborn, Melanie Erin. "The Bitter Relicks of My Flame: The Embodiment of Venereal Disease and Prostitution in the Novels of Jane Austen." 2012,  https://core.ac.uk/download/235716853.pdf.