Gropecunt Lane - Changing Sensibilities

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 often have 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 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. Petticoat Lane, the meaning of which is sometimes misinterpreted as related to prostitution, was in 1830 renamed as Middlesex Street, following complaints about the street being named after an item of underwear. More recently, Rillington Place, where John Christie murdered his victims, was renamed Ruston Close. Selous Street in London was renamed as a mark of respect for Nelson Mandela, as it may have been perceived to have been named in honour of the colonialist Frederick Selous, although it was actually named after the artist Henry Courtney Selous.

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.