Prostitution in Victorian York
Dr Frances Finnegan

A sentimentalised version of a Victorian street walker form the 34th Annual Report of the Female Mission to the Fallen, Charing Cross, London, 1892.

• Thursday 18 June 2015, 6.30PM to 7.20pm
• Free admission
  Booking required
  Book tickets
• K/133, King's Manor, Exhibition Square (map)

No wheelchair access.

Event details

Due to popular demand, this event is now sold out. We do have a waiting list and we release any returned tickets on a first-come-first-served basis.

In this illustrated lecture outlining an aspect of York’s history previously ignored, Dr Frances Finnegan corrects the myths surrounding the nineteenth century ‘social evil’; and discusses the research, writing and particularly the repercussions of her book, Poverty and Prostitution: A Study of Victorian Prostitutes In York, published by Cambridge University Press in 1979. Based on a systematic examination of a variety of sources (weekly newspaper reports of Magistrates’ Court Proceedings, Poor Law Guardians’ Application and Report Books, records of the York Quarter Sessions and census enumerators’ notebooks), the book details all recorded circumstances of the l,400 prostitutes and brothel keepers documented as operating in York between 1837 and 1887. It examines too, the history of York’s main attempt at reform - the Bishophill Refuge or Female Penitentiary Society (founded in 1845), whose records include letters from former inmates. The lecture is illustrated with photographs of the now demolished haunts and houses of the women, and pictures of contemporary rescue workers and the institutions they ran.

Speaker biography

Frances Finnegan (formerly Frances Beechey) obtained a BA in History from the University of York in 1970. Her DPhil (1976) was in Social and Economic History and was on the Irish community in York - 1840-1875. She moved to Ireland in 1978 and lectured in Social History at the Waterford Institute of Technology for 27 years. Her publications include: Poverty and Prostitution: a Study of Victorian Prostitutes in York (Cambridge University Press, 1979); Poverty and Prejudice: a Study of Irish Immigrants in York, 1840-1875 (Cork University Press, 1982, and to be re-published by York University Press later this year); Do Penance or Perish: Magdalen Asylums in Ireland (Oxford University Press, 2004); and Introspections: the Poetry & Private World of Dorothea Herbert (Congrave Press,2011). She has also written on working-class communities in South Wales, South Yorkshire and Liverpool. 

Tickets