Author: Little, Cynthia
Biography:
LITTLE, Cynthia (fl 1829-31)
Unknown to the public record of births and deaths, “Cynthia Little” was the name adopted by a London woman, said to have been in her day one of the leading sex workers of Vauxhall Gardens who had been kept for a time by “a now very distinguished personage whom it might be treason most foul to name” (The News). Her real name is unknown. She is said to have been “antiquated” and “on the wrong side of 40” by 1830, so she may have been born about 1785. In 1829 there are reports of her appearing at a masquerade dressed successively as Cupid, as a maniac, and as a Quakeress. In 1830, however, the law caught up with her and she appeared in court on 25 Mar. charged with circulating obscene prints and books of an immoral tendency to inmates of the King’s Bench Prison. As one of the papers suggested, her pseudonym was an imitation of “Thomas Little” or Thomas Moore (q.v.). The reporter observed that if her writings were no match for his luscious and playful style, “she has beaten him completely out of the field in filthiness of thought, obscenity of language, and indelicate allusion” (New Times). The case was widely reported, generally in a jocular way. In her defence, Little protested that she had “no other means of procuring a livelihood,” that readers would pay for ribaldry but not for moral writings, and that the obscene prints had been specifically requested by some of the benchers (barristers) at the prison. She was fined £20, her publications were burnt, and she was sentenced to four months in the House of Correction. She retorted that that would give her time to complete a work on Brazil in which she was then collaborating; the magistrates expressed themselves happy to have “so unexpectedly” met her views. (ancestry.com 21 Jan. 2024; findmypast.com 21 Jan. 2024; Pierce Egan’s Weekly Courier 8 Mar. 1829; The News 29 Mar. 1830; New Times 26 Mar. 1830) HJ