The Great Social Evil
Time — Midnight. A Sketch not a Hundred Miles from the Haymarket.
Bella: "Ah, Fanny! How long have you been gay!
John Leech
Punch 33 (10 January 1857): 114
Wood engraving
Other material on Victorian prostitution.
Although predating Hardy's "The Ruined Maid" by some nine years, the cartoon admirably illustrates the poem's satiric dialogue. Note that, as the cartoon makes clear, in the Victorian period, "gay" referred to prostitution and not homosexuality.
This cartoon has previously been reproduced in the 1970 Thomas Hardy Year Book (p. 27) with H. A. T. Johnson's "Thomas Hardy and the Respectable Muse."
Scanned image by Philip V. Allingham; text by PVA and George P. Landow.