Category Archives: Sexism

1892: Dr Morris: “Nature is trying to abolish the clitoris”

Robert T. Morris was an American physician of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Morris had a busy practice on Madison Avenue and was considered an expert on sexual, reproductive and gynaecological matters.

Like many doctors of his era, Morris was an advocate of clitoridectomy, a surgical procedure to remove the clitoris as a treatment for masturbation, hysteria and female depression. He considered the clitoris a redundant organ that caused more trouble than its worth:

“The clitoris is a little electric button which [when pressed] rings up the whole nervous system… a very common factor in invalidism in young women.”

Morris also made the extraordinary claim that the clitoris was dying out, at least in white women. While still pronounced in primates and African-American females, “in about 80 per cent of all Aryan American women” the organ was concealed by genital folds; as a consequence it was undeveloped and too easily aroused or irritated. From this Morris concluded that:

“Nature is trying to abolish the clitoris as civilisation advances. The degenerative process… is characteristic of the civilised type of homo sapiens.”

Source: Dr Robert T Morris, writing in Transactions of the American Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, vol. 5, 1892. 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.

1509: Machiavelli throws up over ugly prostitute

A pensive and perhaps regretful Machiavelli

In late 1509, the political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli, future author of The Prince, had a disturbing sexual encounter with a prostitute in Lombardy. He later described this incident in a letter to his good friend Luigi Guicciardini.

According to Machiavelli, he was “very horny without [his] wife” and was lured into the home of a washerwoman. Once inside she offered him the services of a woman with “a towel over her head and face”:

“I was now completely terrified, however since I was alone with her in the dark, I gave her a good hump. Even though I found her thighs flabby, her genitals greasy and her breath stinking a bit, my lust was so desperate that I went ahead and gave it to her anyway.”

When their liaison was over, Machiavelli managed to find a lamp and was able to shine a light on the woman:

“My God, she was so ugly that I almost dropped dead… a tuft of hair, half white and half black, the top of her head was bald which allowed you to see several lice taking a stroll… Her eyebrows were full of nits; one eye looked down and the other up. Her tear ducts were full of mucus… her nose was twisted into a peculiar shape, the nostrils were full of snot and one of them was half missing. Her mouth looked like Lorenzo de Medici’s, twisted on one side and drooling since she had no teeth to keep the saliva in her mouth. Her lip was covered with a thin but rather long moustache…”

When the woman spoke to him, Machiavelli was struck by her “stinking breath” and:

“…heaved so much that I vomited all over her.”

Letter from Machiavelli to Guicciardini, December 9th 1509. 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.

1841: “Shame to every novel-reading woman!”

Orson Squire Fowler was probably America’s most famous phrenologist, running a New York practice for six decades. He published several books on a range of subjects, from education to matrimony. Dr Fowler even dabbled in his own form of feng shui, singing the praises of octagonal houses and their aesthetic, spiritual and practical advantages for the 19th century family.

In one of his early books Fowler warned that children must be protected from shows of intimacy within the home, however playful. He urged parents not to kiss, hug or stroke their children, or allow other relatives or visitors to do the same.

Likewise, Fowler cautioned parents against kissing, touching or using terms of affection in the presence of their children. To do so was to “fill their [children’s] heads with those impurities which fill their own”.

Children exposed to “wanton intimacy”, writes Fowler, will later:

“…burst forth into inextinguishable flames of premature love, self pollution or unbridled licentiousness.”

Fowler also warned of the risks to young women who read family newspapers, periodicals and, worst of all, the novel:

“Shame to every novel-reading woman! They cannot have pure minds and unsullied feelings. Cupid… and waking dreams of love are fast consuming their health and morals.”

Source: Orson Fowler, Fowler on Matrimony, or Phrenology and Physiology applied to the selection of Suitable Companions for Life, &c., 1841. 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.

1793: A guide to London’s prostitutes

Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies was a long-running guidebook to some of London’s more popular prostitutes. It first appeared in the mid-1750s and was published more or less annually until 1795.

The list offered summaries of each lady’s age, appearance and demeanour, as well as an assessment of their sexual services. Prices were also included: they ranged from sixpence to in excess of two pounds. The 1793 edition of Harris’s List’s included entries on Mrs Russell of Fludger Street, Westminster:

“…[who] is a fine plump girl, at the age of 28, rather dark hair and eyes… much in vogue with the bucks and bloods of the town who admired her more for her vulgarity than any thing else, she being extremely expert at uncommon oaths…”

Mrs Brooks, who lives next to the pawnbroker on Newman Street:

“A genteel lady, about 23… with well formed projecting bubbies that defy the result of any manual pressure, panting and glowing with unfeigned desire, and soon inviting the gratification of senses.”

Mrs Pierce, 19 St George’s Row, Apollo Gardens:

“She is still in her teens, with fine dark eyes and hair, her mouth opens to display a regular set of teeth… [with] pretty panting bubbies… in bed she will twine and twist, sigh and murmur, pant and glow with unfeigned emotions, and never be tired of love’s game, whilst the blind boy can find the way in…”

And Mrs Harvey of Upper Newman Street:

“…is a tall genteel lady, about 26… a brown beauty and very agreeable, has fine eyes, and a good set of teeth. She became a proselyte to the sport of Venus very young… She is very active and nimble and not a little clever in the performance of the art of friction [and] she understands the up-and-down art of her posteriors as well as any lady of her profession.”

Source: Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, 1793 edition.

1757: Farmer whipped, fined for venting his frustration with women

In 1757 Samuel Rhodes, a yeoman farmer from Stoughton, Massachusetts, was charged with “wilfully and maliciously” uttering “false and blasphemous words”. According to witnesses Rhodes was overheard saying to another person:

“God was a damned fool for ever making a woman.”

The court found Rhodes guilty and sentenced him to be:

“…set upon the gallows with a rope about his neck for the space of one hour; that he be publicly whipped twenty-five stripes; and that he become bound by way of recognisance in the sum of twenty pounds… for the term of twelve months and that he pay [the] costs of prosecution.”

Source: Minutes of the Superior Court of Judicature of Massachusetts Bay, Suffolk County, November 1757. 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.

1750: Royal Marine stripped and flogged; nobody spots ‘his’ breasts

Hannah Snell (1723-1792) was a British woman who served in the Royal Marines as a man. Snell was born in Worcester, married in her late teens and gave birth to a daughter. When her daughter died and her husband absconded, Snell borrowed some men’s clothing and enlisted in the Marines using the name ‘James Gray’. In 1748 Snell was deployed to India where she saw heavy combat and:

“…received twelve wounds, six in her right arm and five in her left and the other in her groin, from the last of which she extracted the ball and herself perfected the cure, in order to prevent her sex being discovered…”

Snell’s gender concealment is even more remarkable considering that she was flogged twice during her three years in the Marines – and both times was stripped to the waist. In 1748 Snell was charged with dereliction of duty and publicly whipped in Carlisle. Snell later told biographers she avoided detection because her “breasts were but small” and:

“…her arms [were] drawn up, the protuberance of her breasts was inconsiderable and they were hid by her standing close to the gate.”

Snell received a second whipping onboard a Royal Navy ship, where she prevented the:

“…discovery of her sex by tying a handkerchief round her neck and spreading it over her breasts.”

During this second flogging Snell’s breasts were spotted by the ship’s bosun, who “said they were the most like a woman’s he ever saw” – however he was not concerned enough to raise the alarm. On her return to England in 1750 Snell confessed her true gender. She was given an honourable discharge and, later, a military pension. Snell later ran a pub until her mental health deteriorated. She spent her final months in the notorious Bedlam hospital.

Source: Various inc. Boston Weekly Newsletter, December 6th 1750. 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.

1662: Maryland magistrate dumped for genital slur

Thomas Baker arrived in the colony of Maryland as an indentured servant, sometime in the mid-1650s. In 1661 the Maryland governor, Philip Calvert, appointed Baker as magistrate of Charles County. This generated a firestorm of protest. There were questions about Baker’s suitability: he was of very humble origins, questionable sobriety and very coarse behaviour. Just how coarse became a matter of public record in 1662, during a series of defamation hearings. Witnesses accused Baker of slandering several men and women, the latter with sexual slurs. He was alleged to have described Mrs Joan Nevill:

“…in so gross a manner that if [the things Baker said were] true… she would not be a creature modest enough to keep the brutals of the forest company.”

Two other witnesses, Richard Roe and William Robisson, testified that Baker had said that:

“…[Francis] Pope’s wife’s c–t was like a shot bag, and Miss Alice Hatch’s c—t would make sauce enough for all the dogs in the town.”

No official sanction or decision against Baker was recorded, however he never again sat as a magistrate, suggesting that the governor quietly ordered Baker’s removal.

Source: Records of Charles County, Maryland, 1658 and 1662. 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.

1590: Men without pubic hair inclined to impotence

Phillip Barrough was an English physician who practised in the second half of the 16th century. In his 1590 book The Method of Physick, Barrough describes the signs of fertility and impotence:

“A woman that is fertile ought to have a moderate stature and height of the body, breadth of the loins, buttocks sticking out, a handsome and convenient greatness of the belly, a straight breast and large paps… The hot distemper of a man is easily known by the abundance of hairs, especially black hairs, upon the genitals and the places adjoining, from above unto the middle thighs.”

Men with no hair about their testicles, writes Barrough, are more inclined to impotence:

“A temperament that is too cold is declared by the parts about the stones being bald and without hair… They that be of this temperature be not desirous [or] prone to carnal lust.”

Source: Phillip Barrough, The Method of Physick, London, 1590. 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.

c.79AD: Menstrual blood doubles as handy pesticide

Pliny the Elder, writing in the 1st century AD, lists the manifold dangers of menstrual blood – which can spoil meat, sour wine, dull sharp knives and send tame dogs mad. He also warns that men will die if they copulate with a menstruating woman during an eclipse:

“If the menstrual discharge coincides with an eclipse of the moon or sun, the evils resulting from it are irremediable… the congress with a woman [is] noxious [and will have] fatal effects for the man.”

Pliny does suggest harnessing menstruation for practical ends, such as eradicating pests from food crops:

“If a woman strips herself naked while she is menstruating and walks round a field, the caterpillars, worms, beetles and other vermin will fall from off the ears of corn… This discovery was first made in Cappadocia [where] it is the practice for women to walk through the middle of the fields with their garments tucked above the thighs.”

Source: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, c.79AD. 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.

1852: Dr Beach on satyriasis or nymphomania

Wooster Beach was a New York doctor who pioneered the use of natural and herbal remedies in the first half of the 19th century. He was also a prolific author of medical guidebooks. In one of his texts, published in 1852, Beach describes the symptoms and effects of satyriasis or “uterine fury”, more recently known as nymphomania.

According to Beach, this affliction is most common among:

“Virgins who are ripe for husbands; women living in gratification of their lusts and in luxury; widows or those who are married to frigid old men.”

At its worst, this “filthy disease” produces women who are:

“..seized with fury; they solicit all whom they meet to venereal embraces, and attack those that refuse with fists and nails. [They are] perpetually handling their privates with their wanton fingers, until they become maniac and are forced to be confined with chains.”

Beach’s suggested treatment for satyriasis involves a bland diet, regular doses of laxative, avoidance of the opposite sex and ice-cold applications to the genitals.

Source: Wooster Beach, The American Practice of Medicine, 1852. 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.