At her best, Priss could do the chuck without assistance, and several times a night. As hours passed and she gulped aqua vitae — not easy, when you are upside down — she might need the whooping customers to hold her spread legs steady, but she kept going. On some occasions Rhenish wine or sack was poured in. Even the most athletic whore could not then drink the wine or sack herself — though others might, if they were not too squeamish. To imply that chucking came from a cultured tradition, it was always said to originate with the ancient Romans. 'Well, they were noble!' Priss would roar. 'Let's have an orgy in their memory…' Riotous roistering then ensued, with rudely skimpy costumes that no one bothered to check for classical authenticity. Inevitably, there were men who boasted they were experts at the chucking. The most intense of these dab hands would expound boringly on the best method to ensure insertion. Only complete rogues offered to sell their knowledge, even for the price of a cup of sack.
By those of a whimsical nature, the Half-Crown Chuck might be described as an early form of slot machine.
Friday the 15th of September 1650 was decreed by Parliament a Day of Public Thanksgiving. Such days had been regularly held throughout the previous decade, to celebrate military victories. This one was for the subjugating of Ireland by Oliver Cromwell, who was now subjugating the Scots too, in driving rain. Public thanksgiving took the form of sermons. Not many customers at the Six Windmills bothered to attend these sermons, or read them when Parliament subsequently had them printed — though some did, because, as in all walks of life, Ma Fotheringham's clientele included a number of hypocrites. Even by the management and generality such occasions were always marked, however. Celebrations were eagerly held in brothel premises. To enter into the spirit, extra drink was ordered to accompany a raucous performance of the famous Half-Crown Chuck ritual.
Parliament had in previous months passed a brisk sequence of reforming Acts and Ordinances: against Drunkenness; against Swearing and Cursing; against Immodest Dress, which specified the deplorable habits of painting, wearing black patches, and lewd dress in women; against the importation of French wines — unless captured by Oliver Cromwell as booty at Edinburgh, which was given a specific exclusion so he could sell it to pay soldiers; against the import of French silks and wool; against the import of foreign hats and hatbands. None of those Acts and Ordinances was observed at the Six Windmills. The men were blasphemous and drunk, the women were immodest. However, Priss coarsely conceded it was not obligatory to wear a foreign hat to fuck.
During the extremely noisy evening of the 15th of September, a group of sailors arrived from a ship called the Emerald. Sailors were always attended to kindly. Whores appreciated the danger of their adventurous lives at sea, not to mention their desperation for female company the minute they made land and the fact they would have just been paid, possibly with extra prize money. A sailor with a wooden leg posed a special challenge for a whore too.
Safe harbours for that evening's wind-blown matelots were at once provided. Only officers were permitted entry to the chuck, however, since it was understood that only officers would be in possession of the correct coins. The concept of having the right money ready, please, has older origins than may be supposed. Little interrogation was needed; experienced women could tell at a glance from a man's dress and attitude whether he was a basic pug-nosed seaman or an uglier, ruder specimen but of higher status with a heavier purse. The lower ranks were peeled off slickly to the basic booths, without offence being intended or taken.
Sailors were generally faithful to the King, but at least one crewman off the Emerald held libertarian ideals. Unimpressed with the elitist entry-rules Ma Fotheringham had imposed for her own performance, one toprigger loathed being excluded. He did not claim that the world was a treasury for the common man, he just shouted repeatedly that barring him from the chuck was unfair. During this unpleasantness he was threatened that the hector would be called from doorkeeping to expel him. His outrage continued, but he simmered down. The girls, who had heard blustering before, let him mooch off on his own; they had their hands full with other people anyway, for it was a busy night.
The grumbling sailor rambled about in quieter areas of the brothel, searching for a free girl, or a free supper, or at least a free drink. He passed various small cells where men who were more willing to spend money than he was were hard at it. He stepped over one or two who had collapsed in passageways, overcome by one kind of excitement or another. As he roamed and muttered, he saw another man emerge from what must be a privy. The landbird had a confident swagger, and looked as if he knew what he was about. The sailor followed him.
Appearances were deceptive, as is so often the case when much drink has been consumed. In the cavernous interior, the swaggerer soon lost his way. By accident, he lurched into the kitchen. The brothel might be mostly taken up with parlours and bedrooms but, once the long night ended, every tired whore liked to sit down with a slice of smoked gammon folded in a piece of bread and butter, then wash it down with a tankard of small beer while complaining about that day's customers. There was a kitchen, therefore, one remarkably well stocked with gleaming copper pans, bright slipware bowls and organised knife boxes. It had bunches of dried herbs, smoked meats hung over the hearth, even jelly moulds though they were rarely used. Clean wash-cloths and pan-holders hung neatly on a string on the mantel-beam. The fire was leaping cheerily. The mousetraps were all set.
This warm nook was the province of Mrs Mildmay — a perfectly respectable cook-housekeeper (or so she maintained) who came in from Moorfields on a daily basis, bringing a ten-year-old washer-up and a coal-scuttle boy. Like the brothel's doctor, wall-painter, scrivener and doorman, she was an expert professional. She could have worked in a duke's mansion, had dukes not preferred to use illegitimate offspring of their own and had the House of Lords not been abolished anyway the year before, on grounds of being useless and dangerous.
Of course the brothel doctor was a quack, but he was a good quack, one of the best fake physicians in London. Of course, too, the doorman was a pimp; he was the bawd's own pimp, hectors always were.
The point was that running a good brothel required high standards of domestic comfort. Men might as well remain at home, unless they were pampered, fed and entertained here decently. It was not enough that the girls knew their stuff — though if girls worked for Priss Fotheringham, they certainly did. Gentlemen expected that there would be meat pies in a choice of flavours, dishes of oysters, fine wines, footstools, someone who could play a flute, books of undemanding love poems, and up-to-date copies of news-sheets, with both Royalist and Parliamentarian points of view.