Gropecunt Lane

Gropecunt Lane () was a street name found in English towns and cities during the Middle Ages, believed to be a reference to the prostitution centred on those areas; it was normal practice for a medieval street name to reflect the street's function or the economic activity taking place within it. Gropecunt, the earliest known use of which is in about 1230, appears to have been derived as a compound of the words grope and cunt. Streets with that name were often in the busiest parts of medieval towns and cities, and at least one appears to have been an important thoroughfare. Although the name was once common throughout England, changes in attitude resulted in its replacement by more innocuous versions such as Grape Lane. A variation of Gropecunt was last recorded as a street name in 1561.

Toponymy

Variations include Gropecunte, Gropecountelane, Gropecontelane, Groppecountelane and Gropekuntelane. There were once many such street names in England, but all have now been bowdlerised. In the city of York, for instance, Grapcunt Lane—grāp is the Old English word for grope—was renamed as Grape Lane. Bristol's 'Gropecount Lane', recorded by that form in the late fifteenth century had been contracted to Grope Lane by the 1540s, sometimes then being euphemised to 'Grape Lane'. The first record of the word grope being used in the sense of sexual touching appears in 1380; cunt has been used to describe the vulva since at least 1230, and has cognates in many Germanic languages, although its precise etymology is uncertain.

Prostitution

Under its entry for the word cunt, the Oxford English Dictionary reports that a street was listed as Gropecuntlane in about 1230, the first appearance of that name. According to author Angus McIntyre, organised prostitution was well established in London by the middle of the 12th century, initially mainly confined to Southwark in the southeast, but later spreading to other areas such as Smithfield, Shoreditch, Clerkenwell, and Westminster. The practice was often tolerated by the authorities, and there are many historical examples of it being dealt with by regulation rather than by censure: in 1393 the authorities in London allowed prostitutes to work only in Cokkes Lane (now known as Cock Lane) and in 1285 French prostitutes in Montpellier were confined to a single street. It was normal practice for medieval street names to reflect their function, or the economic activity taking place within them (especially the commodities available for sale), hence the frequency of names such as The Shambles, Silver Street, Fish Street, and Swinegate (pork butchers) in cities with a medieval history. Prostitution may well have been a normal aspect of medieval urban life; in A survey of London (1598) John Stow describes Love Lane as "so called of Wantons". The more graphic Gropecunt Lane, however, is possibly the most obvious allusion to paid sexual activity, although Bristol's Hoorstrete (Whore's Street) also seems unambiguous. By contrast, Fucking Grove in Bristol lay in a secluded and rural part of the medieval town lands. Sexual activity there may thus have been more recreational than transactional.

Changing sensibilities The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word cunt as "The female external genital organs" and notes "Its currency is restricted in the manner of other taboo-words: see the small-type note s.v. FUCK v." During the Middle Ages, the word may have often been considered merely vulgar, having been in common use in its anatomical sense since at least the 13th century. In "The Miller's Tale", Geoffrey Chaucer writes "And prively he caughte hire by the queynte" (and intimately he caught her by her crotch), and the comedy Philotus (1603) mentions "put doun thy hand and graip hir cunt." Gradually, though, the word became used more as the obscenity it is generally considered to be today. In John Garfield's Wandring Whore II (1660) the word is applied to a woman, specifically a whore—"this is none of your pittiful Sneakesbyes and Raskalls that will offer a sturdy C— but eighteen pence or two shillings, and repent of the business afterwards". Francis Grose's A Classical Dictionary of The Vulgar Tongue (1785) lists the word as "C**t. The chonnos of the Greek, and the cunnus of the Latin dictionaries; a nasty name for a nasty thing: un con Miege."

Although some medieval street names such as Addle Street (stinking urine, or other liquid filth; mire) and Fetter Lane (once Fewterer, meaning "idle and disorderly person") have survived, others have been changed in deference to contemporary attitudes. Sherborne Lane in London was in 1272–73 known as Shitteborwelane, later Shite-burn lane and Shite-buruelane (possibly due to nearby cesspits). Pissing Alley, one of several identically named streets whose names survived the Great Fire of London, was called Little Friday Street in 1848, before being absorbed into Cannon Street in 1853–54. As the most ubiquitous and explicit example of such street names, with the exception of Shrewsbury and possibly Newcastle (where a Grapecuntlane was mentioned in 1588) the use of Gropecunt seems to have fallen out of favour by the 14th century. Its steady disappearance from the English vernacular may have been the result of a gradual cleaning-up of the name; Gropecuntelane in 13th-century Wells became Grope Lane, and then in the 19th century, Grove Lane. The ruling Protestant conservative elite's growing hostility to prostitution during the 16th century resulted in the closure of the Southwark stews in 1546, replacing earlier attempts at regulation.

Locations

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