My faded form, which once could please, Horror excites, instead of love,
My tainted blood with languid flow Scarce circles through my chilling veins; My eye-lids now more heavy grow, I feel keen DEATH inflicting pains. Ah! gracious Heaven, be this my lot – Let me, when fleeting life shall cease, In deep Oblivion be forgot, Or waft me to thy realms of peace. Big tears gush’d o’er her pallid cheek; DESPAIR’s dark mists around her roll; She u tter’d faint a frantic shriek, And DEATH releas’d her struggling soul. 12
The wraith-like figure depicted in the poem above, with her ‘faded form’ and ‘tainted
blood’, appears to represent the archetypical ‘fallen woman’. Once a ‘smiling village maid’,
she was led astray by a ‘villain’s flattery’, and her immoral lifestyle has subsequently left her
on the brink of death; her youthful beauty spent, and her body ravaged with disease. She is a
familiar image, evocative of popular portrayals of sex workers – film or theatre depictions of
bawdy Victorian taverns spring to mind. Though this image of prostitution seems common
now, this poem, published in 1788, was capturing a subtle, contemporary shift in cultural and
social perceptions of sex work; a shift that significantly changed the approach and purpose of
policing it. Sex work had long been stigmatised as immoral, and those who participated in
12 ‘The Prostitute’, The Times , 16 October 1788, 1146, The Times Digital Archive, Gale Primary Sources [Accessed 27/02/2023]
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