Category Archives: Nudity

1790: Hindu wives kiss a priest’s private parts for fertility

John Macdonald was a servant to several 18th-century noblemen and colonial officials. According to his writings, Macdonald was the son of an affluent tenant farmer from Inverness. When his family was “ruined” in the 1740s, Macdonald, then just a young boy, was placed in service. He became a footman and valet and later spent more than 30 years traveling the globe with a succession of masters.

Better educated and more literate than his colleagues, Macdonald penned a memoir that contains rare glimpses of life as a working-class tourist abroad. It also describes racier aspects of foreign life, like this fertility ritual in western India:

“At Dillinagogue there was a tank where the Gentoos [Hindus] bathe themselves and the women in particular. At the end of the tank is a piece of rising ground with a cross fixed 12 feet high, where a priest sits most days, naked as he was born. When the women come to enter the bath they make the priest a grand salaam [greeting]. They have a shift on when they entered the water. When a young girl who has been betrothed for some years is going home to her husband… goes to take the bath, she makes a grand salaam to the priest and kisses his private parts, hoping he will pray that they may have children. I took a great delight in going to see those ceremonies.”

Source: John Macdonald, Travels in Various Parts of Europe, Asia and Africa &c., 1790. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1617: William Zane too free with his private member

In 1617, Somerset magistrates heard several charges against William Zane, a horse-breaker from the village of Long Sutton, near Somerton. Zane had committed a series of public indecencies involving women and young girls. The worst of these was the seduction of Ann West, with whom he had fornicated after promising marriage. He later collected a ten pound dowry from her parents.

According to testimony, their sexual affair was revealed when Zane arrived at the West home and:

“..called for Ann West, she being then at the street door, and because she came not presently unto him, he came forth to her and pulled her into the chamber by the arm, then having his private members showing out of his breeches.”

This was not the first time Zane had been free with his genital endowments. Several weeks earlier he:

“..came into the house of William Parsons, being one of his neighbours, finding the wife of William sitting at her work, drawed out his private member and laid it upon her shoulder and wished aloud that her shoulder was another thing…”

On another occasion, Zane thrust his hand under the skirts of a young girl, making her cry. When the girl’s mother confronted Zane in public and dressed him down, he responded by sneaking into her yard and soiling her clean washing with “filthy ordure and dung of people”.

The magistrates found Zane guilty and sentenced him to a series of public whippings. He was also ordered to repay the ten pounds to Ann West’s parents and to pay two shillings a week for the upkeep of her child. Ann West was also sentenced to a whipping for premarital fornication.

Source: Somerset Quarter Session Rolls, n.27, 1617. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1921: Heavy fines for bare-kneed motorists on Long Island

In August 1921, police in Long Beach, New York, cracked down on people driving about in bare knees. Captain Walter Barruscale told a local newspaper that his officers had issued several fines, ranging in amounts of $10 to $25, to motorists entering Long Beach with their knees exposed:

“‘Long Beach will not countenance people coming here in automobiles and wearing bathing costumes, or without their limbs being properly covered below the knees’, Capt. Barruscale said.”

Barrascule said that the same rules applied to those who “go about the streets… bare knees must be confined within walls or restricted to the bathing beaches”. Signs have been erected on roads into Long Beach, warning motorists of the restrictions and possible penalties.

Source: The Evening World, New York, August 22nd 1921. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1620: Somerset man shows wife, a penny a peek

In 1620, a farmer named Cutte from the village of Halse, near Taunton, appeared before a Somerset magistrate. Cutte was charged with gross indecency towards his unnamed wife. The alleged offence was committed at a village gathering where several people, including the defendant, were drunk.

According to witnesses, Cutte:

“..made an offer to diverse [people] then present, that for a penny a piece they should see his wife’s privities… and there withal he did take her and throw her upon a board and did take up her clothes and showed her nakedness in [the] most beastly and uncivil manner.”

Cutte’s behaviour apparently shocked those present, who called a halt to his enterprise by blowing out the candles and casting the room into darkness. The court found Cutte guilty and admonished him but no punishment was recorded.

Source: Session Rolls of the Somerset Quarter Sessions, 1620, f.36. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1870: Army officer’s wife unimpressed by Illinois flasher

Frank D. Baldwin served in the United States Army for more than 40 years, enlisting as a teenaged private in 1862 and retiring as a major-general in 1906. During his service, Baldwin fought with distinction in the US Civil War, several campaigns against Native American leaders Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, and the Spanish-American War. He was one of only 19 Americans to win the prestigious Medal of Honor twice.

Michigan-born Baldwin married Alice Blackwood in January 1867. For the next few years, husband and wife were separated by Frank’s military postings so corresponded regularly by mail. Alice’s letters suggest she was a devoted wife who adored her husband, as well as being a person of good humour.

Writing in October 1870, Alice informed Frank of an incident during a train trip through Illinois:

“There was a man showed his conflumux [penis] to me at one station where we stopped… while I was looking out the window. I thought he might have saved himself the trouble because I had seen one before.”

Alice’s letters occasionally contained sexual commentary or titillation. In one note from June 1873, she playfully chastises Frank for “casting sly glances at Mrs Sowter’s bubbies. You ought to be ashamed.” She also teases him by writing:

“How are you this hot day? I am most roasted and my chemise sticks to me and the sweat runs down my legs and I suppose I smell very sweet, don’t you wish you could be around just now?”

In another letter from December 1870, Alice taunts her husband about his prior intentions to marry another woman, Nellie Smith. According to Alice, Frank’s alternative wife might have suffered from his generous endowment:

“I felt real queer and strange when I heard you had half a mind to marry another girl. I thought I held undivided your love. Well, it’s too late now. Nellie Smith don’t know what she escaped. She would have been killed at one nab of your old Long Tom.”

Frank Baldwin died in 1923, aged 80. Alice died in 1930 after securing the publication of her late husband’s memoirs.

Source: Letters from Alice Baldwin to Frank Baldwin dated September 5th 1869; October 1st 1870; June 22nd 1873. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1511: Belgians amuse themselves with pornographic snowmen

From New Year’s Eve 1510, the city of Brussels was frozen by more than six weeks of sub-zero temperatures and constant snow. In a city with high levels of poverty, this prolonged cold snap caused considerable human suffering, leading some to dub it the ‘Winter of Death’.

Those able to stay warm made the most of things by engaging in a spontaneous snowman competition. All across Brussels, life-sized snowmen began to appear in parks, on street corners and outside private homes. One contemporary report suggests at least 50 clusters of snow figures could be observed in various places around the city.

By all accounts, most of these snowmen were cleverly sculpted and quite realistic. Some may even have been created by prominent artists. Among the figures represented in snow were Jesus Christ, Adam and Eve and other Biblical figures, Roman deities, Saint George and the dragon, unicorns and several signs of the Zodiac.

In the city’s working-class areas, however, the majority of the snow figures were pornographic or scatological. Near the city fountain, a snow couple fornicated while another snow figure watched with a visible erection. A number of snow women, ranging from nuns to prostitutes, appeared in various states of undress. Near the city market, a snow boy urinated into the mouth of another. A snow cow could be seen, halfway through defecation, while a snow drunk lay amongst his own snowy excrement.

The poet Jan Smeken, who penned the best-known account of the Belgian snow figures, described one scene of implied bestiality:

“In the Rosendal, a wonder was to be seen: a huge plump woman, completely naked, her buttocks like a barrel and her breasts finely formed. A dog was ensconced between her legs, her pudenda covered by a rose…”

The snowmen of Brussels lasted for about six weeks, until the return of warmer weather in mid-February.

Source: Jan Smeken, The Pure Wonder of Ice and Snow, 1511. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1896: George Bush in court for his “mania for nudity”

In the summer of 1896, George Bush appeared in a London court charged with running around stark naked. He was found scaling a wall in Whitman Road, Bow in the nude. Bush had only been released from prison hours before, after serving a month for streaking through a first-class railway carriage.

The constables who arrested Bush were alerted to his antics by local children, who had been frightened by a “white ghost”:

“[The] prisoner said ‘It’s been rather hot today and they are after me. I threw my clothes into the Cut. I was only liberated [from prison] this morning.’ Constable JR said that doctors who had examined Bush certified they could find no trace of insanity. The present [charge] made the eighth time he had been charged with being in a state of nudity in railway carriages or public streets… Altogether there were 18 former convictions against the prisoner.”

The magistrate condemned the prisoner for his “mania for nudity”. He was ordered to pay a combined surety of 20 pounds or spend another month in prison.

Source: Reynold’s Newspaper, London, August 23rd 1896. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1763: Coachman bares buttocks at disgusted theatre-goers

In January 1763 a French aristocrat, Christophe-Louis Pajot de Villers, hosted a private showing of a Rousseau opera in the ballroom of his Paris home. It was attended by more than 30 minor royals, aristocrats and wealthy members of the bourgeoisie. The performance concluded at around 10pm and guests prepared to leave. Behind the curtain, de Villers’ coachman, Nicolas Dandeli, mounted the stage, shouted “Tiens, la voila la comedie!” (Hey, here’s a funny show!) and offered a parting gesture:

“The coachman… decided to undo his trousers and turn his back to the curtain, with the intention of displaying his bare rump to those who were still in the room. At this point, Capolin, a negro aged thirteen years, raised the curtain so that those remaining in the hall saw the nude posterior of the coachman, who was bent over in such a way that his rear end stuck out towards the audience. He even slapped his backside loudly with his hands to call attention to himself. As a result, all of those still in the room saw, much to their astonishment, an act of tremendous impudence, which so greatly revolted them that they left the room immediately, complaining of the terrible scandal.”

The outraged de Villers immediately summoned the commissioners, who dragged Dandeli off to prison. He remained there for several days while the commissioners took a series of depositions. He was released after de Villers – apparently unable to tolerate not having a coachman – withdrew his complaint.

Source: Archives Nationales Y13772, January 22nd 1763, cited in Campardon, Les Spectacles de la Foire, 1877. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1478: Waiting crowd shown the newborn prince and his testicles

Philip, the future king of Castile, was born on June 22nd 1478. The following day Margaret of York, the child’s godmother, carried baby Philip into the market square in Bruges, where a large crowd had gathered. According to a Flemish chronicler Margaret proudly stripped the baby and showed him to the crowd:

“…She took his testicles in her hands and spoke: ‘Children, see here your newborn lord Philip, from the emperor’s side’. The crowd, seeing that it was a son, was overwhelmingly happy, thanking and praising our beloved God that he had granted them a young prince.”

Margaret’s display was a response to rumours, circulated by agents of French king Louis XI, that baby Philip was actually a girl. Philip became King of Castile shortly before his 28th birthday but died suddenly just three months later. His obsessive and unstable wife Joanna, who at the time of Philip’s death was pregnant with their sixth child, became even more erratic. She refused to surrender Philip’s body for burial, keeping it in her apartments for several months. According to some chroniclers, she sometimes opened Philip’s casket to kiss and stroke his corpse.

Source: Cited in W. Appe Alberts, Dit sijn die wonderlijke oorloghen van den doorluchtigen hoochgheboren prince, &tc., 1978. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1690: Oxford student sues for chicken-carving slur

In 1690, the chancellor’s court at Oxford University heard a defamation dispute between two Exeter College students: John Colmer and John Crabbe. According to the plaintiff Colmer and his witnesses, Crabbe had been telling malicious and dishonest stories about Colmer for several weeks. Colmer produced witnesses to support his claims, including the respected scholar and future Bishop of Peterborough, White Kennett.

According to their testimony, most of Crabbe’s “slanderous tales” told of Colmer’s alleged promiscuity and “brutish lust”. One story spread by Crabbe was that Colmer had been present at:

“..a supper with the Earl of Warwick [where] he represented to his Lordship the obscene parts of a woman, by the cutting of such a figure from the flesh of a roasted fowl.”

Crabbe also produced witnesses in his defence, though most were exposed as homeless prostitutes. Unsurprisingly, the chancellor’s court ruled in Colmer’s favour.

Source: Oxford University archives, Chancellor’s Court papers, folio 56, 1690.