The Phœnix of Sodom; or, the Vere Street Coterie Being an Exhibition of the Gambols Practised by the Ancient Lechers of Sodom and Gomorrah, Embellished and Improved with the Modern Refinements in Sodomitical Practices, by the Members of the Vere Street Coterie, of Detestable Memory.

THE VERE STREET COTERIE, OR The Phœnix of Sodom.

I THINK it a duty I owe both the reader and myself, to account for my acquaintance with any part of the disgraceful transactions disclosed in the annexed pages.

Some months ago, when I was contemplating the most odious characters on the list of Attorneys, to compose the Fifth Number of my Strictures on the Practice of those voracious vultures, it came to my knowledge that an Attorney named Wooley (with that alacrity with which crows fly to carrion) had repaired to the different prisons, where those wretches apprehended in Vere Street were committed, and, under pretence of assisting the offenders obtaining their liberty, and enabling them to escape justice, stripped them of every guinea they possessed, and, indeed, of every article that would produce one at a pawnbroker’s. I therefore sent to Newgate, to learn from Cook, the landlord of the house, whether my information was correct; who sent his wife to me, and related a long history of the means and fallacious pretences by which he obtained above thirty pounds from her, for the purpose of bringing her husband through; that being the phrase of those fellows, who hang about prisons, to tutor their new clients:—(I have made use of the expression TUTOR, because there are degrees of iniquity, that the most atrocious offenders accustomed to a long residence in the cells of Newgate have yet to learn of a certain description of attorneys;) in fine, after he had exhausted every stratagem that his colleague the devil and himself could devise to get money, and finding no more could be extracted from nakedness, he became wholly negligent of his client; and in order to get rid of Cook’s importunities, told him he must have fifty pounds more, or he could not get him liberated. On the woman prostrating (as the truth was) that almost every article of wearing apparel had been disposed of to raise the money he already had received, he very friendly suggested to her, that a woman of her appearance might easily raise money by putting off One Pound Bank Notes that he could procure for her at Ten Shillings each! the woman could answer only with a groan—“I am in trouble enough already!” and declined the mode he proposed, to procure liberty for her husband, and a halter for herself!—Here the material part of the negociation ended, and Cook was left by this virtuous one, et cetera, without the least assistance at his trial, not even a guinea for council, or the expence of a single sheet of paper. In this dreadful situation, I call it a dreadful situation, for whatever crimes a man be charged with, he is certainly entitled to the benefit of a defence; especially when he paid so amply for it: and though ultimately he was convicted, and sentenced to the Pillory, I would ask, if, under all these circumstances, his virtuous attorney ought not to have been sentenced to a gibbet?—However, it does not appear to me, that had Wooley done all that he was able, he could have saved Cook from his fate; for affidavit men could be of no service: however, as in my next Number of Strictures I have a very long chapter to bestow on the sympathetic feelings, and matchless integrity of this man, in an hundred other instances equally enormous; I shall for the present drop the subject, having afforded my readers a trifling shred, or splinter, of his great stock of virtue.

It will be necessary here to correct a false opinion that is gone abroad respecting the nature of Cook’s offence.—It is generally believed, that he was convicted of Sodomy: but the fact is, that he was neither convicted, or even indicted for that offence, but for keeping a house of resort, or rendezvous for such detestable wretches to meet at.—I have thought it proper, nay just, to make this distinction, to lessen in some measure the horror that the public in general have felt against him.

My original inquiry into the conduct of Wooley was, merely to punish him for his shameful conduct as an Attorney, by making an application to the Court of King’s Bench for restoration of the money he robbed Cook of; and to shew the Court and public of what pernicious materials some attorneys are composed:—therefore, if Wooley thinks it any degradation to be acquainted with Cook, he must remember, it was his own infamy that brought it on; and I shall never be ashamed to advocate the cause of the oppressed, or terrified at the task of reprobating the oppressor. It has been observed by an elegant writer, that “the man who allows the oppression shares the crime;” and I certainly shall shew that Cook has endured a scene of oppression that the laws of this country never did, and I never will sanction, for the purpose of screening opulent infamy; the crime of the man is no justification of the brutality with which he was treated—a brutality repugnant to the feelings of every man possessing the generous bravery of Englishmen, who are ever merciful. Cowards only are cruel; and the man who would put a rat to death by wanton torture is at best but an eminent ruffian! but more upon this subject when I have gone through the offensive part of my task, which is some slender description of the enormities committed in various parts of the town by these Sodomitical miscreants.

Cook and his wife, elate with the prospect of procuring justice for the injury they had received from Wooley, considered me their friend, and disclosed all the circumstances that follow; and in answer to some inquiries that curiosity led me to make, I received a long written history of iniquities (which I shall partially relate) prefaced by the following paragraph.

“I do not plead any thing in extenuation of the offence for which I have been convicted and punished; I confess I merited all I met with; I own I participated in all the guilt except the final completion of it, which is abhorrent to my nature. I am, therefore, the more criminal, because I had no unnatural inclinations to gratify:—I was prompt by Avarice only, and not by the indulgence of vicious propensities;—if I had, there would be witnesses enough against me, among the detestable crew I am about to expose.”

Cook, though an illiterate, man, possesses a strong mind, and an accurate memory. He states, that he unfortunately met a man named Yardley, at the King’s Arms, Round Court, in the Strand, who proposed taking a Public House, and making it a joint concern: he, by degrees, opened to Cook his plan, and told him he was acquainted with a great number of gentlemen, some hundreds, who would frequent a house that he kept; and who were so generous in payment, that he knew a man who kept a house of the same kind, who, in three years, got money enough to live upon and retired.

This picture of advantage caught Cook;—and he closed with the proposals, having about one hundred and fifty pounds in his pocket; and, in conjunction with this man, took the Swan in Vere-street, the fatal house in question; which was entered upon, and furnished in a style most appropriate for the purposes it was intended. Four beds were provided in one room:—another was fitted up for a ladies’ dressing-room, with a toilette, and every appendage of rouge, &c. &c.:—a third room was called the Chaple, where marriages took place, sometimes between a female grenadier, six feet high, and a petit maitre not more than half the altitude of his beloved wife! These marriages were solemnized with all the mockery of bride maids and bride men; and the nuptials were frequently consumated by two, three, or four couple, in the same room, and in the sight of each other! incredible as this circumstance may appear, the reader may depend it is all provable:—the upper part of the house was appropriated to wretches who were constantly in waiting for casual customers; who practised all the allurements that are found in a brothel, by the more natural description of prostitutes; and the only difference consisting in that want of decency that subsists between the most profligate men and depraved women.—Men of rank, and respectable situations in life, might be seen wallowing either in or on the beds with wretches of the lowest description: but the perpetration of the abominable act, however offensive, was infinitely more tolerable than the shocking conversation that accompanied the perpetration; some of which, Cook has solemnly declared to me, was so odious, that he could not either write, or verbally relate. It seems many of these wretches are married; and frequently, when they are together, make their wives, who they call Tommies, topics of ridicule; and boast of having compelled them to act parts too shocking to think of;—an instance of which I must relate, because the history of the country furnished a precedent, that consigned a Peer of the realm, and his infamous associate, to the gallows: I allude to Lord Audley’s case, who was convicted of rape and sodomy at one time with his own wife.—The instance I shall relate was told at Vere-street by the husband, to many of the wretches, and the partner of his guilt, then present, who joined in the relation, as if it had been a meritorious act:—this ill-fated woman had been brought to that pitch of infamy, that she frequently endured it, as if it was no offence even to modesty! the dreadful fellow, who is the subject of the narration, is one of three miscreants living together in the same public office in the city, one of whom is known by the appellation of Venus.

It seems the greater part of these reptiles assume feigned names, though not very appropriate to their calling in life: for instance, Kitty Cambric is a Coal Merchant; Miss Selina, a Runner at a Police office; Black-eyed Leonora, a Drummer; Pretty Harriet, a Butcher; Lady Godina, a Waiter; the Duchess of Gloucester, a gentleman’s servant; Duchess of Devonshire, a Blacksmith; and Miss Sweet Lips, a Country Grocer. It is a generally received opinion, and a very natural one, that the prevalence of this passion has for its object effeminate delicate beings only: but this seems to be, by Cook’s account, a mistaken, notion; and the reverse is so palpable in many instances, that the Fanny Murry, Lucy Cooper, and Kitty Fisher, are now personified by an athletic Bargeman, an Herculean Coal-heaver, and a deaf tyre Smith: the latter of these monsters has two sons, both very handsome young men, whom he boasts are full as depraved as himself. These are merely part of the common stock belonging to the house; but the visitors were more numerous, and, if possible, more infamous, because more exalted in life: and these ladies, like the ladies of the petticoat order, have their favorite men; one of whom was White, a drummer of the guards, who, some short time since, was executed for a crime of the most detestable description with Hebden an Ensign. White, being an universal favorite, was very deep in the secrets of the fashionable part of the coterie; of which he made a most ample confession in writing, immediately previous to his execution; the truth of which he averred, even to his last moments; but it is impossible to give it literally, for the person who took it, in the presence of a magistrate, said that the recital made him so sick he could not proceed.