page_title: Second Thoughts Are Best
section_title: Prostitutes
hierarchical_section_title: Second Thoughts Are Best / Reforming society / Prostitutes
caption_attribution_description: English: by Cruikshank, Isaac, 1756?-1811?, printmaker
context_page_description: Second Thoughts Are Best: or, a Further Improvement of a Late Scheme to Prevent Street Robberies is a 1729 pamphlet by Daniel Defoe. He wrote it under the name of Andrew Moreton Esq., presented as a dissatisfied middle-class old man extremely concerned about the increase in criminality around the 1720s.
  As in other essays, such as Every-body’s Business, Is No-Body’s Business, The Protestant Monastery, Parochial Tyranny and Augusta Triumphans, Moreton here inquiries into a range of different social and moral issues: the increase in highway robberies, the inefficiency of the night watch, the wicked trade of gin shops, and the "infestation" of prostitutes, beggars, and vagrants all around London. Moreton's declared intention is "to break up street-robbers, nest and egg", providing practical solutions for a reformation of the night watch, manners, places and even the theatre, reforms which would improve the quality of life.
  Defoe was particularly inclined to use pseudonyms, acquiring in this way the reputation as one of the most chameleon-like English writers.
context_section_description: In Moreton's reform for the security and prosperity of the city, a pressing issue is represented by prostitutes, depicted as agents of destruction that easily mislead men into criminality and seem to be "the first motive to their villany, and egg them in all manner of mischief". London prostitutes were vigorously denounced in early eighteenth-century England, especially for their obscenities and aggressiveness. It was a common belief that these vicious women might corrupt young men, particularly apprentices and servants.
  Watchmen, as guardians of the peace of the streets, were supposed to deal within the confines of their beat with drunkenness, soliciting, and petty tumults, and detaining suspicious characters. However, they were often willing to concede privileges to certain prostitutes, consequently provoking parishioners' complains about their inability to enforce the law. Indeed, even the prostitutes taken up by the watch were frequently released after a few hours in the watch house without seeing any magistrate. The circumstances changed when theft or some other kind of crimes were committed. Public opinion, and Moreton too, firmly believed that these women needed to be restrained in their liberties not only for their vices and immoralities but because they represented a real threat to common living. Unfortunately, most of the times this was easier said than done. Watchmen had the power to apprehend criminals within the boundaries of their parish, and they were liable to be reprimanded for leaving their beats. So they might not have been so inclined to chase a woman who crossed into another parish in order to avoid being taken.
  Moreover, Moreton denounces night houses and cellars as places where prostitutes and thieves meet and carry on their hellish trade. Here criminals "wait for signal of their scout; here they cast their schemes, and bring in advices; here they encourage and initiate young thieves; here they barter and sell their stolen goods; these are their exchanges and asylums after mischief". Thus, night houses stand as wicked fortresses for criminals and they must be suppressed. They were indeed real headquarters of felons, ideal places for the arrangement of their business and for the exchange of goods and information. Apparently they functioned as an unorthodox "club" for wandering criminals where you could be sure to be welcome and to find companionship if a juicy goal just came out.
caption: A Fool and His Money Soon Parted (1790) by Cruikshank, Isaac, 1756?–1811?, printmaker
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