Women reigned in Rag Fair, which extended from Tower Hill along Rosemary Lane into Cable Street in the 17th- to 19th-century parish of Stepney. The permanent market centred near Wellclose Square, but many vendors were mobile, locating anywhere they could.

Samuel Pepys called Damaris Page ‘the most Famous Bawd in the Towne’. Poor women worked in her houses, sold rags and thieved, alternating occupations according to need. In her brothel near the Navy Victualling Office, Page allowed press-gangs in for a fee, and as reward The Bawdy-House Riots of 1668 targeted her. She became a property-speculator and in her will left tuppence apiece to ‘the Sisterhood’ (whores)to buy thread to mend their stockings.

Some of the back-alleys still wend their ways east towards one of the first London Docks in 1805, the building of which razed the area to make basins for sailing ships and high walls to store goods inside. Around the dock walls a myriad of businesses set up to service ships and sailors. Tobacco was a major import, its wharf preserved and accessible, along with two tall ships in replica.

The artist JMW Turner was said to love prostitutes or maybe it was all naked women; he kept a house in Wapping for weekends with his longtime love, Sophia Booth. One of two local women accused of witchcraft in the 1600s lived nearby, Lydia Rogers.

Fans of Call the Midwife (television series and the memoir it’s based on) will be interested to see where Mary escaped from one of the notorious brothel-cafés of Cable Street in the bombed-out era of decline. Where we walk was part of the midwives’ area of remit in Stepney.

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