![The complaint of all the she-traders in Rosemary-lane, Black-Mary’s-Hole, Ratcliff, Dog-and-Bitch-Yard, Moorfields, and Petticoat-lane, against the city cheats, or the new coffee-houses, about Charing-Cross, Westminster, Covent-garden, Fleet-street, and those parts of the town. To the tune of an Orange ([London], printed by J. Wallis, between the Two Gateways going into White-Friars, [between 1682 and 1693]), [1]p.; 1°. Pepysian Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge University: P5 405. ESTCR174202](https://images.tandf.co.uk/common/jackets/crclarge/978131509/9781315094649.jpg "The complaint of all the she-traders in Rosemary-lane, Black-Mary’s-Hole, Ratcliff, Dog-and-Bitch-Yard, Moorfields, and Petticoat-lane, against the city cheats, or the new coffee-houses, about Charing-Cross, Westminster, Covent-garden, Fleet-street, and those parts of the town. To the tune of an Orange ([London], printed by J. Wallis, between the Two Gateways going into White-Friars, [between 1682 and 1693]), [1]p.; 1°. Pepysian Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge University: P5 405. ESTCR174202")
ABSTRACT
A satirical broadside ballad of seventy lines, in fourteen five-line stanzas, with an evolving four-syllable refrain. The verses are written as a complaint from the whores of the East End of London – who work in the areas long associated with vice – addressed to a new kind of prostitute who they claim is working in coffee-houses of the West End. These new prostitutes, they claim, counterfeit their trade by appearing in the dress and demeanour of honest women working as maid servants and coffee-women. In this way, the ballad is a satire on the changing moral and cultural climate of the city following the Glorious Revolution, for which coffee-houses are again emblematic. The title alludes to the complaint form well known in coffee-house satires, although the conceit is not pursued at great length. The tune to which the The complaint of all the she-traders is sung was noted for its associations with William III (William of Orange), but the specific political dimension of this ballad is obscure, if it exists at all. T e implicit contrast between the East End and West End of London was also at this time a relatively new phenomenon, as the East End had only in recent decades lost its historically enduring associations as a place where wealthy merchants resided.
