Thank you Edward.
I was further musing over some of the street names for Edward’s map (hmm perhaps Mews-ing is a better term).
There is an alleyway that runs along the border of palisades and academy, between my Horta property and Victor’s Hotel.
It seems to me that an alleyway that sits down the side of a hotel and emerges on one side towards the high wall of the city would be suited to many unsavoury transactions.
Prostitution: Of course nothing like that happens in New Babbage and as we are upstanding victorian-ish types, so we would never accept vulgar historically popular terms such as “Gropecunt alley”. The common 19th century replacement in the UK was Lover’s lane but that is so bland it leaves much to be desired. We can do better. We can easily go with a lazy blame the ladies option along the lines of “slattern alley”, but how about switching the roles around? A nod to the drunken “client” who may end up rather the poorer than he expected “Jacktar’s folly”. Or there’s a rather nice late 19th-century term “Gal sneaker” referring to a seducer of young ladies, “Galsneaker Alley” has a nice ring. A close relative of that term relates more to the “pimp” side of the equation, and has a somewhat Scottish ring to it, “Macdaddy passage”.
Alternatively, there’s Smuggling: Not that there is anything smuggled, or in any sense, not 100% paid for and legitimate in Mr Mornington’s establishment. But perhaps we might consider those that move by night, in the shadow of the watch, “Gentleman’s pass” fits well with Kipling’s poem, or perhaps, an allusion to the illicit alcohol production “moonlight passage”, though given that the hotel bar is known as a “watering hole” not only for the provision of drink, perhaps “Grog’s end” is more fitting.
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