Where/how Victorian-era philanderers would meet their mistresses

[returnfrom]

Hello everyone

Comments

[boltonia]

If your setting is London, prostitutes would roam most of the London parks at night. I don't think the city closed the parks at sunset in those days and there was limited lighting.

[judit100]

Prostitutes, the oldest job in the world

[marfisa]

If your philanderer lives in a rural village, farmers' and shopkeepers' daughters might be more plausible victims than anyone of more or less his own social class. Since shopkeepers presumably lived in town, it would probably be more feasible for a girl from such a household to sneak out of the house at night--or even during the day--for a rendezvous with the rake in question. Although I'm not sure where the couple could actually go to do anything seriously improper, unless the woman sneaked into the wealthy bachelor's house (somehow avoiding being seen by his servants or anyone else) or they did it in some sort of shed or something behind the shop or on the unscrupulous seducer's own property. I suppose the barn could work if the girl was from a farm family, although then the guy would have to surreptitiously ride out of town to the farm, sneak into the barn, and hope that none of the farmhands or family members decided to come back to check on the cows or something once all the animals had been brought in for the night

[mmebahorel]

For some possible actual testimony (it gets too weird to be straight fantasy), My Secret Life will definitely hook you up

[sushidog]

I thought of Walter too. He went through quite a lot of shop girls as well as house servants, so that might be worth considering.

[cattraine]

In London, I think one found women of the demi-monde strolling through Covent Gardens in the evening and in pubs.

[orthent]

And a wealthy gentleman might either hang out there because he was slumming, or fancied himself an urban sociologist, or perhaps because he was a reformer (or posing as one, like Mr. Ablewhite in The Moonstone.)