Elizabeth Needham

Her house was the most exclusive in London and her customers came from the highest strata of fashionable society, but she eventually ran afoul of the moral reformers of the day and died as a result of the severe treatment she received after being sentenced to stand in the pillory.

He described her as "artful", and it seems that she was friendly and engaging with her potential employees, revealing her vicious character only when they were under her roof; in The Dunciad, Alexander Pope warns not to "... lard your words with Mother Needham's style".

[4] Pope mentions her once more at the end of The Dunciad (1728), making reference to her foul mouth, and again, alongside other notorious madams of the day, in the last verses of his Coronation Epistle (which were suppressed in editions of the poem from 1769 until 1954): For Want of you, we spend our random Wit on The first we find with Needham, Brooks, or Briton.

[11] Some idea of the reputation of Needham's house can be gathered from one of Joe Miller's Jests, which involves her asking her landlord to wait for his money until Parliament and the Convocation sit, at which point she will be able to pay him ten times over,[12] and by a satirical premature obituary, which appeared in the London Journal.

The latter describes a will in which she distributes appropriate gifts to her famous clients: "a picture of Sodom and Gomorrah to indorsing D―n; an ounce of Mercuris Dulcis to Beau C―e, of St. Martin's Lane; her estate to the Duke of Wharton; her library to Ned C―; and a receipt to cure a clap to little Quibus".

Despite the popular notion that Sally Salisbury's 1723 stabbing of John Finch, the son of the Duchess of Winchelsea, had taken place in her house (it had actually occurred at the Three Tuns Tavern in Covent Garden),[1][13] the first time Needham was raided was in 1724: Yesterday morning the celebrated Mother Needham and Mother Bird, two eminent conservators of the Game of the Kingdom, were committed to Newgate; their houses being disturb'd the night before by the Constables, who disengaged the Gentlemen and Ladies to a great number, and carried them to the Round-House.

[2] In late 1730, Sir John Gonson, a Justice of the Peace and fervent supporter of the Society for the Reformation of Manners, spurred on by the furore surrounding the Charteris rape case,[4] began conducting raids on brothels all over London.

[7] On 29 April 1731, Needham was convicted of keeping a disorderly house, fined one shilling, and sentenced to stand twice in the pillory, and "to find sureties for her good behaviour for 3 years".

[2] Her demise was celebrated in a mocking rhyme: Ye Ladies of Drury, now weep Your voices in howling now raise For Old Mother Needham's laid deep And bitter will be all your Days.

She who drest you in Sattins so fine Who trained you up for the Game Who Bail, on occasion would find And keep you from Dolly[a] and Shame Now is laid low in her Grave...[3] Hogarth was still at work on A Harlot's Progress when she died, so she never saw herself immortalised.

Elizabeth Needham (right foreground) as portrayed in William Hogarth 's A Harlot's Progress
The connection with Sally Salisbury only served to heighten the reputation of Needham's house.