The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #4811   Message #26503
Posted By: Bruce O.
25-Apr-98 - 01:48 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Lass of Islington
Subject: RE: bawdy song prostitute takes john to court
Closest I can come is:

From Pinkethman's Jests, 1720. The songs in his songbook were almost all taken from Pills to Purge Melancholy.

A strummelling two-handed harlot, grenadier-height and limbed like a bacon-faced Dutchman, accused a little diminutive tailor once of a rape.
The magistrate he was brought before ordered the fellow's purse to be taken from him and given her, bidding her be sure to keep it; and so diamissed her
As soon as she had turned her back, he bid the little nit-cracker follow her and take it from her again: upon which she quickly returned to make her complaint that, like an impudent rogue as he was, he would have robbered her of the purse.
"But I hope,' says the magistrate, 'you didn't let him.'
'Let him! No,' says she, 'I think not! 'Slife, I'd have tore his eyes out first.'
'Very well,' answered he, 'pray let me see if the money be all safe.' So, taking the purse, he returned it to the owner, and bid 'em give the whore forty lashes-with this instruction: 'If you had defended your honesty as well as you did your money, you had never been ravished, you whore, you.'