Now it’s trendy and pretty, but 18th-century Seven Dials, in the parish of St Giles, was notorious for poverty and crime. With no organised police force, thieves, highwaymen and fences bribed those hired to catch them, meeting in low-down dives where they spoke a secret language called flash. The notoriously corrupt Jonathan Wild captured thief Jack Sheppard more than once, but Jack made dramatic escapes from prison aided by his sexworker-partner Edgworth Bess.

With gin selling at a penny a glass, carousing was full-on in areas outsiders called rookeries, thieves’ kitchens, the Holy Land (because of the Irish presence) and, for Drury Lane’s red-light zone, Little Sodom. A range of middle-class spies, social investigators, reporters and slum-tourists came to look and sometimes participate in goings-on they found appalling and titillating. John Gay portrayed popular hero Jack Sheppard and Public Enemy Jonathan Wild in the characters of Captain MacHeath and Mr Peachum, in The Beggar’s Opera, London’s favourite theatre-piece throughout the 18th century. What fun!

The Naked Anthropologist is Laura’s longtime blog, now dedicated to historical walks that highlight issues of Gender, Sex and Class.