Talk:Elizabeth Needham

Patches on her face
The version I have heard previously is that those patches were from advanced syphillis, not pock-marks? Amity150 06:08, 14 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I think our current text is being diplomatic. Until the small pox outbreak a few years later, pock marks would have been from cankers, and Needham would have to have the disease.  Given that women take longer to get visible signs, should would have a very advanced case.  Geogre 11:59, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I merely went for the more general "pock-marked" as although it is undoubtedly syphillis (given Hogarth's exuberant use of it in his other works) I couldn't find a reliable source that actually came out and said that. What I shouldn't have done, of course, is link it to the too specific pox virus (so I've unlinked it). Yomangani talk 01:57, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Duke of Wharton?
One thing to bear in mind, here, is that Wharton was a very, very strident Jacobite (see the article on Nathaniel Mist). Charteris, no doubt, was a rapist, panderer, and john, but I've never encountered solid links between Wharton and that business before. The sentence that mentions Charteris and Wharton has a note and reference: does the reference specifically nail down Wharton, or does it just suggest that Wharton is a reason Charteris can evade arrest for a long time? Geogre 12:03, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It specifically mentions Wharton as a customer (ahead of Charteris), but evasion of arrest due to his influence is only hinted at. I would have preferred another source to back it up, but the material on Needham is pretty thin. Yomangani talk 01:48, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

That's interesting. You see, the infamous "Whig history" of the 18th century liked to paint with a broad brush when it came to Tories. Wharton was not just a Tory: he was a pain in the rear Jacobite. Therefore, for the people who wrote the history of the 18th century in the 19th, and chiefly Thomas Babbington Macaulay, he was no doubt a rake as well as a syphilitic madman. These are the people who gave us the "proof" that Swift was insane all his life because of his "undoubted" misanthropy, etc. That might seem quaint, except that the influence of that Whig history is everywhere. It took major researches to undo that stuff, and anywhere a source relies on old sources, you're likely to get it without independent verification. This is not to clear Wharton. For all I know he was a rapist every bit as bad as Charteris. It's just that it pays to ask questions with 18th c. history. (Seriously: the "Tale of a Tub was by Thomas Swift" surfaces as late as 1910. The "John Gay was a bitter hack" shows up as late as the 1890's.  It took work to undo that Macaulay shadow.)  Geogre 03:38, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * And now best evidence suggests that Wharton was a kid. He came into money and title at 18, hated his father's "piety," hated the tutors he had been braced to, who were Puritans, and so went off like a loaded spring, trying to out-rake the rakes.  Dead of drink at about, what, 38?  So, yes, he was almost surely a customer of Needham, and probably every other brothel in London.  (Anyone who has read London Journals of Boswell, and Boswell is a proper, moral man, won't be shocked.  Boswell goes through 8 prostitutes a week, it seems like.  'Got an urge? Get a prostitute' seems like his philosophy.)  Geogre 12:28, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Pocketa pocketa
Probably worthwhile mentioning that the patches and pock marks are due to syphilis, not smallpox? Just today, I re-read Swift's "A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed" (1733, a follow up to "The Lady's Dressing Room"), and it's all about those syphilitic sores. The same is true of the other plates in Hogarth's series, and "the dangers of syphilis" might well be the subtitle of the whole thing (and Rake's, for that matter, as Hogarth seemed to use the vice-borne disease as a great fear...as it was in an age before antibiotics and uncertain mercury cures). Now, we gentlemen of the world know what the pockmarks are, but perhaps, for a wider audience, it's worth mentioning in the first body paragraph what they would have signified. (One wonders about any medical archeology on the period and how frequently they discover spirochetic damage on the bones, but, then again, one wonders many things.) Geogre 02:56, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

More about "patches"
We don't have an exact quotation here so it is hard to assess exactly what is meant. However, the term "patches" was not usually used to mean "pock" or "scab" or "sore". A patch was a little piece of black stuff that was stuck on like a "beauty mark". Of course, it generally masked something quite nasty. That is the reason why the "patches" in the picture look very black and obvious. If they were lesions of some sort on the skin, they would be unlikely to be quite so apparent as the artist has made them. Amandajm (talk) 10:10, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * No, no. Of course the patches are not, by themselves, cankers.  They are coverings.  At any rate, the advent of the beauty mark patch (from Versailles), allowed women who had blemishes to cover them up.  Satirists noted that unfashionable women were wearing these high fashion devices and immediately pointed out why.  In the case of Mother Needham, it's likely that she's covering the scars of syphilis, not small pox, and she may have other scars to cover, too.  I.e. Hogarth is suggesting that she is a veteran of many diseases and accidents.  Geogre (talk) 15:02, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Cleaning up red wikilinks
The two red wikilinks (Mother Wisebourne and Coronation Epistle have been speedily and boldly removed delinked. It's not very fitting for a feature article to have broken links. Truthanado (talk) 17:38, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Both should be unlinked, as neither is ever going to get an article. Mother Wisebourne has too little documentary evidence for a verifiable article at this time, and the problem with the Coronation Epistle is that it's just going to have to wait.  It's not a major work, and the reference isn't substantive anyway.  Geogre (talk) 18:46, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Redlinks aren't broken links. Yomangani talk 13:01, 6 January 2009 (UTC)