Elizabeth Needham also known as Mother Needham, was an English procuress

Procuring (prostitution)

Procuring or pandering is the facilitation or provision of a prostitute in the arrangement of a sex act with a customer. Examples of procuring include:*trafficking a prostitute into a country for the purpose of soliciting sex...

 and brothel

Brothel

Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...

-keeper of 18th-century London, who has been identified as the bawd greeting Moll Hackabout in the first plate of William Hogarth

William Hogarth

William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...

's series of satirical etchings, A Harlot's Progress

A Harlot's Progress

A Harlot's Progress is a series of six paintings and engravings by William Hogarth. The series shows the story of a young woman, Mary Hackabout, who arrives in London from the country and becomes a prostitute...

. Although Needham was notorious in London at the time, little is recorded of her life, and no genuine portraits of her survive. Her house was the most exclusive in London and her customers came from the highest strata of fashionable society, but she eventually ran afoul of the moral reformers of the day and died as a result of the severe treatment she received after being sentenced to stand in the pillory

Pillory

The pillory was a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, formerly used for punishment by public humiliation and often further physical abuse, sometimes lethal...

.

Character

Nothing is known of Needham's early life, but by the time she was middle-aged she was renowned in London as the keeper of a brothel

Brothel

Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...

 in Park Place, St. James. Her house was regarded as the most exclusive in London, superior to those of Covent Garden

Covent Garden

Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...

, even to that of the other notorious bawd of the time, Mother Wisebourne. She was said to still be attractive in middle-age; Hogarth described her as a "handsome old Procuress...well dressed in silk", but mentions "patches on her face" and in his picture her face is seen to be pock-marked

Syphilis

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...

. She went by a number of aliases: Bird, Howard, Blewitt and Trent are among those ascribed to her, although Mother Bird was also the name of another brothel-keeper who was committed to Newgate Prison

Newgate Prison

Newgate Prison was a prison in London, at the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey just inside the City of London. It was originally located at the site of a gate in the Roman London Wall. The gate/prison was rebuilt in the 12th century, and demolished in 1777...

 with Needham in 1724. Needham was apparently ruthless with the girls and women who worked for her. They were forced to hire their dresses from her, and, if they were unable to pay the exorbitant rentals, she would force them to take more customers or have them committed to debtors' prison

Debtor's prison

A debtors' prison is a prison for those who are unable to pay a debt.Prior to the mid 19th century debtors' prisons were a common way to deal with unpaid debt.-Debt bondage in ancient Greece and Rome:...

 until they met her demands (a scheme John Cleland

John Cleland

John Cleland was an English novelist most famous and infamous as the author of Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure....

's heroine falls prey to in Fanny Hill

Fanny Hill

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure is an erotic novel by John Cleland first published in England in 1748...

(1748)). Once they were too old or too ill to attract customers, she would throw them out.

Needham procured her prostitutes from many sources including the houses of other brothel-keepers, the "Bails" in Covent Garden where homeless girls would sleep rough, Tom King's Coffee House

Tom King's Coffee House

Tom King's Coffee House was a notorious establishment in Covent Garden, London in the mid-18th century. Open from the time the taverns shut until dawn, it was ostensibly a coffee house, but in reality served as a meeting place for prostitutes and their customers...

, and, it appears, from auctions, but, as depicted in Hogarth's picture, she particularly targeted girls and women fresh from the country. The essayist Richard Steele

Richard Steele

Sir Richard Steele was an Irish writer and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the magazine The Spectator....

 found her pitching to a newly-arrived girl when he went to meet a wagon bringing him items from the countryside. He described her as "artful", and it seems that she was friendly and engaging with her potential employees, revealing her vicious character only when they were under her roof; in The Dunciad

The Dunciad

The Dunciad is a landmark literary satire by Alexander Pope published in three different versions at different times. The first version was published in 1728 anonymously. The second version, the Dunciad Variorum was published anonymously in 1729. The New Dunciad, in four books and with a...

, Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

 warns not to "...lard your words with Mother Needham's style". Pope mentions her once more at the end of The Dunciad (1728), making reference to her foul mouth, and again, alongside other notorious madams of the day, in the last verses of his Coronation Epistle (which were suppressed in editions of the poem from 1769 until 1954):
Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones....

 refers to her in his Pasquin (1736) and used Hogarth's representation of her as the model for Mother Punchbowl in The Covent Garden Tragedy

The Covent Garden Tragedy

The Covent-Garden Tragedy is a play by Henry Fielding that first appeared on 1 June 1732 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane alongside The Old Debauchees. It is about a love triangle in a brothel involving two prostitutes...

(1732). Mary Davys

Mary Davys

-Life account:Born in Ireland, she married Peter Davys, master of the free school of St Patrick's, Dublin, and had two daughters both of whom seem to have died in infancy...

's bawd in the Accomplish'd Rake of 1727 is called "Mother N-d-m" and targets young girls fresh from the countryside, just as Needham did.

Customers

Chief among her customers were Colonel Francis Charteris and his cousin the Duke of Wharton

Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton

Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton , powerful Jacobite politician, notorious libertine and rake, profligate, and alcoholic, was one of the few people in English history, and the first since the 15th century, to have been raised to a Dukedom whilst still a minor and not closely related to the...

 — Charteris is lounging in the doorway behind Needham in Hogarth's picture. Ronald Paulson suggests that the model for Moll Hackabout in Hogarth's first scene is Ann Bond, who was lured by Needham and raped by Charteris. Charteris, already known as the "Rape-Master General", was convicted and sentenced to death as a result of the Bond rape, although he was later pardoned. Needham's name was not mentioned during the legal proceedings.
Needham may have introduced Charteris to Sally Salisbury

Sally Salisbury

Sally Salisbury , real name Sarah Pridden and also known as Sarah Priddon, was a celebrated prostitute in early 18th-century London. She was the lover of many notable members of society, and socialised with many others....

 around 1708. Salisbury was the pre-eminent prostitute of the day and was kept by Charteris for a short time as mistress at the beginning of her career. When her previous bawd, Mother Wisebourne, died in 1719, she became a member of Needham's household and brought with her a clientele from the highest ranks of society. Salisbury brought further fame to Needham's house by involving another of her girls in the theft of the Earl of Cardigan's

Earl of Cardigan

Earl of Cardigan is a title in the Peerage of England, currently held by the Marquesses of Ailesbury, and used as a courtesy title by the heir apparent to that Marquessate, currently David Brudenell-Bruce, son of the 8th Marquess.-History of the title:...

 clothes. The two women accompanied him to Newmarket where he became drunk, and after putting him to bed at an inn they stole his clothes and jewellery and returned to London. Luckily the Earl treated the matter as a joke.

Some idea of the reputation of Needham's house can be gathered from one of Joe Miller's Jests, which involves her asking her landlord to wait for his money until Parliament and the Convocation

Convocation of the English Clergy

The Convocation of the English Clergy is a synodical assembly of the Church of England consisting of bishops and clergy.- Background and introduction :...

 sit, at which point she will be able to pay him ten times over, and by a satirical premature obituary, which appeared in the London Journal. The latter describes a will in which she distributes appropriate gifts to her famous clients: "a picture of Sodom and Gomorrah

Sodom and Gomorrah

Sodom and Gomorrah were cities mentioned in the Book of Genesis and later expounded upon throughout the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and Deuterocanonical sources....

 to indorsing D―n; an ounce of Mercuris Dulcis

Mercury (element)

Mercury is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It is also known as quicksilver or hydrargyrum...

 to Beau C―e, of St. Martin’s Lane; her estate to the Duke of Wharton; her library to Ned C―; and a receipt to cure a clap to little Quibus". At the time, the figures mentioned would not have been spared their blushes by the omission of their full names, but identifying them now is guesswork.

Her well-connected clientele may have allowed her to escape arrest. Despite the popular notion that Sally Salisbury's 1723 stabbing of John Finch, the son of the Duchess of Winchelsea, had taken place in her house (it had actually occurred at the Three Tuns Tavern in Covent Garden), the first time Needham was raided was in 1724:
The constables had found "two women in bed with two men of distinction". The men were bound over, but the women were sent to Tothill Fields Bridewell

Tothill Fields Bridewell

Tothill Fields Bridewell was a prison located in the Westminster area of central London between 1618 and 1884. It was named 'Bridewell' after the Bridewell Palace, which during the 16th century had become one of the City of London's most important prisons...

 to do hard labour. Needham's punishment on this occasion is not recorded, but it appears that she was still incarcerated in September when her house burned down, killing one of the inhabitants, Captain Barbute, a French officer. In 1728, several of her girls were arrested, but she appears to have escaped punishment.

Arrest, conviction and death

In late 1730, Sir John Gonson

John Gonson

Sir John Gonson was a British judge for nearly 50 years in the early 18th century, serving as a Justice of the Peace and Chairman of the Quarter Sessions for the City of Westminster...

, a Justice of the Peace

Justice of the Peace

A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...

 and fervent supporter of the Society for the Reformation of Manners

Society for the Reformation of Manners

The Society for the Reformation of Manners was founded in the Tower Hamlets area of London in 1691. Its espoused aims were the suppression of profanity, immorality, and other lewd activities in general, and of brothels and prostitution in particular....

, spurred on by the furore surrounding the Charteris rape case, began conducting raids on brothels all over London. By early 1731 he had arrived at St James, where some residents of Park Place reported "a Notorious Disorderly House in that Neighbourhood". In truth, Needham's house was hardly unknown, having served the upper echelons of society for years, but she was arrested by Gonson and committed to the Gatehouse by Justice Railton.

On 29 April 1731, Needham was convicted of keeping a disorderly house, fined one shilling

Shilling

The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...

, and sentenced to stand twice in the pillory

Pillory

The pillory was a device made of a wooden or metal framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, formerly used for punishment by public humiliation and often further physical abuse, sometimes lethal...

, and "to find sureties for her good behaviour for 3 years". On 30 April she was taken to the pillory near Park Place to stand for the first time. Perhaps because of her connections, she was allowed to lie face down in front of the pillory and a number of guards were paid to protect her. Despite this she received such a pelting that it was thought likely she would die before her punishment was completed. The crowds that had gathered to see her pilloried were so large that one boy fell on an iron fencing rail while trying to get a better look and was killed.

Needham was taken from the pillory alive, but died on 3 May 1731, the day before she was due to stand in the pillory (this time at New Palace Yard) for the second time. With her last words she apparently expressed great fear at having to stand in the pillory again after the severe punishment she had received the first time. The Grub Street Journal

Grub Street Journal

Published from January 8, 1730 to 1738, The Grub-Street Journal was a satire on popular journalism and hack-writing as it was conducted in Grub Street in London. It was largely edited by Richard Russel and the botanist John Martyn...

, the satirical journal allied with Alexander Pope and others of Hogarth's friends, sardonically reported that the populace "acted very ungratefully, considering how much she had done to oblige them". Her demise was celebrated in a mocking rhyme:

Ye Ladies of Drury, now weep

Your voices in howling now raise

For Old Mother Needham's laid deep

And bitter will be all your Days.

She who drest you in Sattins so fine

Who trained you up for the Game

Who Bail, on occasion would find

And keep you from Dolly and Shame

Now is laid low in her Grave...

Hogarth was still at work on A Harlot's Progress when she died, so she never saw herself immortalised. There were other madams ready to step into her shoes, but it was not until Mother Douglas

Jane Douglas

Jane Douglas commonly known as Mother Douglas, was a brothel-keeper in mid-18th century London. Known at the time as The Empress of the Bawds, her house in Covent Garden attracted customers from the higher echelons of society.-Early career:Mother Douglas was born around 1700 to a well-to-do...

took over the King's Head in Covent Garden in 1741 that a brothel reappeared with a reputation to match that of Needham.