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It wasn't just rich and poor who were living side by side in the overcrowded city streets. In ports and trade centres, people from all over the world – traders, sailors and even slaves – would come and go. London, for example, was very cosmopolitan, with recognisable minority communities settled there. These included Sephardic Jews, Huguenot refugees, Germans and Swiss, as well as some 20,000 black people.
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The population of London in 1750 has been estimated at 614,000. That made the city big enough so that its inhabitants could remain more or less anonymous. Such anonymity brought a relaxation of the strict protocols that governed behaviour in more close-knit, rural communities. As a result, in London and other conurbations, there was more open expression and exploration of sexuality, and erotic songs and images were part of the landscape.
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The upper classes had always had the privacy and freedom to be
unconventional – in sexual as well as in other matters. The migration
of so many poorer people to the cities, where their behaviour was not
scrutinised, monitored or controlled by their families and
communities, enabled the lower classes to experiment, too.
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