What Pornography was Like During the “Bridgerton” Era

Surprise, surprise. Jane Austen’s contemporaries were quite the filthy lot. And you guessed it, humans and porn go back a long way.

Meet Thomas Rowlandson. Artist, caricaturist, cartoonist, and pornographer. Also, social commentator, satirist, and lover of women, drinks, and gambling (often indulging in all three at the same time). In other words, he was a late 18th Century to early 19th Century party boy with a talent for drawing. And draw he did.

His cartoons mocked everything from sex to politics to women’s fashions. His pornographic etchings and drawings, highly explicit and shocking even to us (observe exhibit A below) were so in-demand among wealthy clients that he was even commissioned by the Prince Regent (later King George IV) himself to create naughty works of art for an exclusive private collection. The fact that later, a disgusted Queen Victoria would order them to be destroyed gives us a clue as to how lewd they were. But then again this is straight-laced, boringly prim and proper Queen Victoria we’re talking about; the sight of an exposed ankle and too much bosom would have probably driven her into a fit.

Interestingly, most of his surviving erotic art (more precisely, the ones that survived Queen Victoria’s pornography purge) are now hidden away in Windsor Castle.

His etchings and drawings are so numerous and varied that they offer us a valuable glimpse into how people lived, worked and thought in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Apparently, very little has changed.

Yes, a dairymaid was a woman who worked on a farm and whose job was among other things, to churn milk to make cream, butter and cheese. Rowlandson poked fun at this by drawing a dairymaid churning the milk while in flagrante delicto with a black footman.

The drawing was obviously made to titillate using a combination still well-known to all 21st-century producers of pornographic films: mixing the mundane with the taboo. Dairymaids churning milk were dime a dozen in Regency England. So were footmen in uniform. But a dairymaid having sex with a footman in uniform who was obviously on duty while she herself was working meant that they were doing the deed at serious risk of being caught. Anyone could walk in on them at any moment. How naughty! How exciting! Plus, the footman is of African origin, and no prim and proper white girl in that era would ever be seen with a person like him in public. Therefore, to be having sex with him and enjoying it, she must be a naughty wild hussy indeed!

See anything familiar?

Porn companies are still using the same tactics today. Just look up “interracial” or “taboo” porn online, pretty much the same archetypes and mechanisms are at work.

The Cheating Wife

What is it about cheating married women that turns us on so much? 200 years ago, this was considered titillating.

A man walks in on his wife asleep with her lover, a harlequin (think, Regency-era clown). The shameless pair are lying together with pretty much everything hanging out. The harlequin is holding a club to defend himself just in case the husband walks in on them.

More interesting is the husband’s gaze. What is the angry cuckold looking at? Why, his wife’s lover’s penis of course. Is he subconsciously comparing it to his own? Is his look then, one of a man confronted with his own inadequacies? Or is he himself “fascinated” by the idea of his wife having sex with a man more well-endowed than himself?

Fascinating indeed. Just google “please **** my wife” or variants thereof; you’ll see that this subject is still pretty much a staple in every pornographic website’s repertoire.

The picture above is a masterpiece in storytelling. A well-dressed lady, probably a prostitute, is waving at a ship sailing away. Most likely, her boyfriend is on that ship — a soldier, sailor, or merchant. Meanwhile, she is riding astride a man with his pants pulled down and her skirt pulled up revealing that they are in the midst of having sex. Another couple is doing the same next to them in the dingy room. A dog and a bird in a cage look on with disinterest. An empty tankard lies on the floor strewn together with other unidentifiable bits of rubbish.

The Thrill of Getting Caught

A couple quickly disengages during sex when an older woman (presumably the younger woman’s mother or grandmother) catches them in the act.

There are quite a few things going on: the risk of getting caught and the thrill of being watched (come now, we’ve all thought about it, haven’t we?). Plus, if the woman is unmarried, then doing something taboo makes it all the more exciting.

Unmarried upper-class women were expected to be innocent virgins on their wedding night (men, on the other hand, were free to go about and visit brothels with little consequence to them). This was less so among the lower classes but still, the idea of an unmarried young lady doing something naughty and forbidden was extremely provocative.

The Peeping Tom

Ever fantasized about watching a couple having sex while you remain hidden away? If you feel like a pervert, then you might be comforted by knowing that this fantasy is as old as Adam and Eve. And Thomas Rowlandson immortalised it in the following engraving.

A couple makes love passionately while a young woman watches. She is obviously aroused, lifting her dress and masturbating but unbeknownst to her, an older gentleman spies on her from an upstairs window.

I think this scenario reads like the script from yet another porn movie. But here it is, over two hundred years ago, Thomas Rowlandson has put pen to paper and drawn out this erotic scene.

The Threesome

If you’re a heterosexual male and have never fantasised about sleeping with two (or more women) at the same time then I’d say you were lying. I am also convinced that quite a few women have fantasised about being with two (or more) men. But in any case, Mr Rowlandson’s art is definitely a precursor to modern pornography.

In this engraving, he depicts yet another semi-undressed couple having sex while another woman, also with her breasts on display and skirt pulled up, massaging his testicles.

And of course, there’s the reverse: one woman with two men.

To top it off, here’s a more extreme version: a fantasy Turkish harem where the Sultan is enjoying himself with goodness knows how many slave girls.

The Orgy

As expected, we have usual debauchery and bacchanalia enthusiastically drawn by Mr Rowlandson in his typical style. The unusual bit is that the women aren’t human, but rather part-fish supernatural creatures called naiads. Rowlandson has drawn them with their legs ending in a pair of serpentine fish tails. The fishy ladies put their tails to good use, coiling them around their human lovers’ limbs as they make love.

Ever fantasised about sex with fairy creatures? Aliens? Weird furry beings? Well, Rowlandson strikes yet again.

And finally.

The Perpetual Erection

Ever heard of a successful male pornstar with a below-average sized penis? Or one who was unable to “perform”? Well then, that’s because male-centered pornography is all about the penis. Seriously.

That huge erection you see penetrating an attractive woman’s vagina? Porn provides the stand in — a penis worthy of envy that the male viewer could imagine was his. He could fantasise that he was the well-endowed man having non-stop wild sex with the woman of his dreams.

And so, our filthy Regency engravings leave us with a similar impression. Rowlands drawing of a stage performance with a male actor, fully erect, performing an impossible feat — balancing a tray with silverware on the tip of his hard penis. Meanwhile a half-naked woman (probably there to keep him aroused) sings and dances while a little demon plays the music.

Who knew that 200 year-old pornography could be so enlightening? And the question is, have our own sexual mores and fantasies changed much from those days?

By the way, in case you were wondering, here’s a portrait of Thomas Rowlandson himself:

The pencil sketch dates from 1814, precisely the exact period in which the series Bridgerton is set.

So enough for fantasy, the harsh realities of life in Regency England and what its inhabitants thought of as provocative at the time, have been preserved for posterity by the incredible artwork of this brilliant fellow.

Although to be honest, I’d really love to see the remnants of that collection currently hidden away at Windsor Castle.