Hussy Tales and Whorer Stories: The Cutting Wit of One Sally Salisbury

Sarah Pridden, known to history as Sally Salisbury, was born around the late 17th, early 18th, century, possibly 1692? As is generally the case with people not of high birth (and sometimes even then), her birth year and childhood are much speculated about and there are a few origin stories for her. Her rise to fame is also slightly shrouded in mist, but her successful years (and she died in peak-fame) were so successful and her looks so admired and her biting repartee so clever, hilarious, and repeatable (especially for lower class onlookers, as her wit was mostly at the expense of the wealthy men and women around her) that she was a celebrity and a figure of admiration, even by the people she made fun of. To give you an idea of just how admired she was, she stabbed a lover for giving theatre tickets to someone else, and he forgave her.

What we know about her is largely due to a man who decided to collect memories of her once she was in prison (for the stabbing), and his motives do not seem to have been entirely those of affection; regardless, so many people enjoyed her antics and wanted to weigh in that we have all these letters with stories about her and no real way to decipher what is and isn’t true. There’s a common thread through all of them, a personality shining through even the most disapproving letters, that comes off as intelligent, sharp, very determined to have her own way, and someone who did not suffer fools at all.

But let’s back up. Like many whores, famous and not, Sally Priddon was born poor, in the parish of St Giles — St Giles was a notorious slum even before the great London fire of 1666; it was the location of the first outbreak of the plague of 1665, and even after the fire flattened it, it rose up to become a famous slum once again, home to many whores, both real and fictional – and was not thrilled about it. She was sent to learn a trade and apprenticed to a sempstress (a woman who sewed plain clothes, nothing fancy or expensive) but lost a piece of lace and returned home, where she seems to have lived peaceably until her early teens. “At the very budding of her Puberty”

(and don’t you hate when men use “budding” to refer to young girls? Proust aside, I had this history professor once who said that Dred Scott’s determination to free himself and his family was because he had “two budding daughters.” pause. “Two budding. Daughters.” I got his point — the vulnerability of enslaved young women to sexual assault — but there is something so obscene about the lingering over the word “budding”. Later I came out as a stripper to him, to try and explain why I was late some mornings, and my grades plummeted from As to Cs and Ds. What else can you expect from a man who so lovingly lingers over the word “budding”?)

So Sally budded. She wanted to go to local dances and wear pretty clothes (the downfall of Emma Donaghue’s take on murderess Mary Saunders) and Sally cut up one of her mother’s petticoats and hemmed it to fit her.

Her father completely lost his shit “to see his Wife’s Wardrobe so unmercifully abus’d” and took Sally into the cellar, tied her to the stairs, and then beat her. He didn’t beat the sauce out of her, however: she got herself loose and ran away. Like Nell Gwynn before her, Sally took up selling fruit or flowers in Covent Garden (still a theatre district, but with a growing reputation for crime and whoring); her father hunted her down eventually and accused her once again of destroying her mother’s petticoat, and of stealing 20 pounds when she ran away, which she flatly denied. Contemporaries are in agreement that there is very little likelihood that her father ever had that much money at one time, perhaps even in his entire life, and should Sally have stolen it, she would not have needed to sell fruit, but I digress. What a petty little man.

At some point Sally found a lover who would pay her, and at some point after that (there aren’t reliable accounts of these years) she moved into a brothel run by a famous madame of the time, Mother Wisebourne. “Mother” was a crack at the supposedly far from maternal activity of helping to sell sexual favours, but it is true that bawds took care of the women and girls in their houses, for a fee. There aren’t enough first hand sources to say what the vibe was like between employer and employee, but it probably varied from worker to worker and house to house in the same way that relationships between strippers and strip club owners does, or, in New Zealand and bits of Australia and Nevada, between worker and brothel management.

Sally was the jewel in Mother Wisebourne’s crown, and the madame invested money in her in order to attract high calibre clients, which worked. Sally moved on, finding patrons of incredible wealth.

In one of my favourite stories, we find her with her lover, “the late Earl of G — -, Memorable for nothing more than his great Love of fine Horses, and Whores, and Aversion to Honest Women.” The Earl traveled to a gambling destination in a small carriage, and sat on Sally and another woman’s lap the whole way for lack of room. He had promised them both a lot of expensive gifts, but he gambled all the money he had away and couldn’t pay them. So after however many days of watching him gamble away the money they’d been promised to accompany him, the two women pretended they were going to bed with him and instead tied him up, beat him, took everything he had left of value, “Gold-watch, Diamond-Buttons, Gold-Buckles, Sword-Hilt, and all other Valuable Moveables.” Once they’d taken everything they left and told the story to anyone who would listen, and the Earl became the joke of London.

Back at Mother Wisebourne’s for a stay, another man cannot quite bring himself to pay her what she asks, so he fills a purse with weights and puts five real coins at the top (ahh, the old “hundo wrapped around a roll of ones” trick). Our Sally was no fool, and after emptying the entire purse asked him what the other “coins” might be.

He told her it was the finest gold in the world, “Mompoez” gold, to which she replied,

“The devil confound you and your mumpish money too, you mumping son of a mumping bitch, you shall be damned before you mump me so, you lousy Pimp you!” (the editor of this edition of her “Memoirs” added a footnote that to “mump” is to cheat, so his choice of word was especially unfortunate!)

She then threw a bottle in his face “which breaking, made him in a sad pickle”, hit him with another bottle, and then picked up a poker to attack him and a companion. After that she took everything she could see that was valuable and left them. Mother Wisebourne helped him clean himself up and then showed him out.

Another anecdote has her entertaining one lover while awaiting a richer one; the richer one came to her house, she chucked the first one under the chin and asked him to wait, and came back in two hours, with, as the letter writer said, “a buttered bun” which he says he enjoyed immensely, as he continued to enjoy all her charms until he was,

“A Broken Merchant” (that was his sign off).

Once one of her lovers sneaked her into one of his wife’s balls. The wife was immediately suspicious that this was her rival, and watched to see how well Sally danced (apparently not as well as usual, the writer speculates that her shoes did not fit), and then how well Sally conversed. The lady asked, “Who was your dancing master?” and the ensuing conversation (as reported by the letter writer) is worth quoting at length. Original punctuation and Italics preserved but paragraph breaks entered for clarity.

Our SALLY who is much better at Repartee, and Quickness of Comprehension than at Dancing new Minuets, immediately understood her jealous Rival’s Drift, and reply’d; I perceive your Ladyship does not approve of my Manner of Dancing: But I can assure you, Madam, my Lord — (naming her own husband) admires my Dancing above all Things, and has often told me, that he had much rather Dance, or ___(speaking mighty plain English) with me than with your Ladyship at any time. —

This dry answer, as may be suppos’d, stung the good Lady to the Quick: her cheeks glow’d like the Gills of an angry Turkey-Cock, and quite confounded, she sat mute, as one Thunder-struck.

After some little Space, the Lady who sat next to [Sally] on the other side, fearing, I presume, lest her Vixenship should fall upon her too, and to ingratiate herself into her Favour, began to commend her Dress, and in particular said; These Jewels are extraordinary fine, Madam!

They had need be finer than yours, my Lady, says Sally; you have but one Lord to keep you, and to buy you Jewels, but I have at least half a Score, of which Number, Madam, your Ladyship’s good Lord is not the most inconsiderable.

Nay, my Lady — cries another, You had much better let Mrs Salisbury alone, for she’ll lay Claim to all our Husbands, else, by and by.

Not much to yours, indeed, Madam, replies Sally with her usual Smartness; I try’d him once, and but once, and am resolv’d I’ll never try him again; for I was forc’d to kick him out of Bed, because his — — e’en good for nothing at all, my Lady. —

These home Rubs stop’d all the Ladies Mouths at once, and not one would venture upon her again…

[…]

No Dancing going forward, nor any thing being to be heard in the Room but Whispers, a certain Commander in the Royal Navy, who had been pretty great with SALLY, and had had many a glass of Claret thrown in his Face by her, thought now or never to dash her out of Countenance at once.

He asked her if he was correct when he recognised her dress as a dress she had won at Bath in a competition of the most beautiful and best dancers in which she had bared some flesh and so far outshone the other contestants that she had won the dress, and caused a lot of bad feeling. This was not an anecdote Sally enjoyed being spread about at this point in her career, but she carefully answered, mindful of the listening audience,

No, truly, Sir, this is not the Shift you mean; I sent that, with the rest of my Linen [laundry] to your Mother to be wash’d last Week and she has not brought it home: if it would not be too great a Trouble to you, Sir, I would beg the Favour of you to tell her to bring that and all the rest as soon as possible; excuse the Freedom, Sir.

The gentleman was too ashamed to stay longer, and left immediately.

One last story, if you’ll indulge me!

Getting into her carriage one day, she noticed her footman was staring at her legs in a daze — they were visible because she had lifted her skirt to climb the step into the carriage — and while she snapped at him — a perfectly rational response to the deathless fact that men are absolutely unwilling to control themselves and their behaviour even when it comes to a point of inconveniencing and infuriating their actual employer — she also threw money at him and told him to go see a whore and get it out of his system; a bawdy practicality (and locale) that reminds me of Nell Gwynn.

Sally carried on like this, her popularity, wit, and fortune unabated, until one fight when her lover, a John Finch, gave Sally’s opera tickets to Sally’s sister, whereupon Sally lost her temper and stabbed him with the knife she’d been using to cut her steak.

She regretted it immediately and sent for a doctor, and Finch forgave her just as immediately, but she was arrested nonetheless. Despite Finch’s attempts to get her out of prison, and the lobbying of many of her other lovers and friends to get her released, bail was denied. Her friends and lovers visited her and kept her space filled with gifts and comfort (before the standardisation of prisons, hospitals, &c, prison was unpleasant in direct proportion to one’s income). Sally died in prison in 1724, probably of syphilis-related complications.

Rosenthal, Laura J. “The Whore’s Estate: Sally Salisbury, Prostitution, and Property in Eighteenth-Century London”. Women, Property and the Letters of the Law in Early Modern England. Ed. Margaret W. Ferguson, Nancy E. Wright, A. R. Buck.

Walker, Charles. “Authentick Memoirs of the Life, Intrigues, and Adventures of the Celebrated Sally Salisbury. With True Characters of her most Considerable Gallants.” Nightwalkers, ed. Laura Rosenthal.

Contrary to current use, Walker uses “memoir” simply to refer to people’s (the contributor’s) memories of her.