Black Tudors: Who Was Anne Cobbie?

Who was Anne Cobbie?

We glimpse Anne Cobbie in a 1626 Court Case recorded in the Westminster Court of Session Records, when a witness testified:

“There is one Anne Cobbie a tawnie Moore that is often at the said Bankes his house and this informant saith she had heard her and divers men report that they had rather give her a peece to lie with her then an other 5 shillings because of her soft skin.”

“ Sundry great murders, riots, routs, frays, robberies, adulteries and other incontinent life … and many other the like shameful sins”

“have harlots as readily and commonly as men have vittles honestly in vitteling houses for their money”

“…gowns, jewels, ruffs, muffs, fans and perfume in abundance: Now in the richest colours maybe had, The next day, all in mourning blacke, and sad . . . The next time, rushing in thy Silken weeds, Embroyder’d, lac’t, perfum’d, in glittering shew, Rich like a Lady, and attended so.”

Were Prostitutes Imprisoned and Punished?

Prostitutes of the time could be punished for carrying on their profession. This would mean imprisonment in the Bridewell prison, where women could be forced to work on menial tasks such as spinning hemp. Other punishments could include flogging, a fine or banishment from the city.

Brothels might also be shut down by the authorities. In the 1630s there are records of prostitutes who were punished by being sent to Virginia. Other punishments proposed (though rejected) included branding and the death sentence.

Occupational Hazards, Disease and Pregnancy

In the court case, one woman is referred to as sick with the pox, and this was clearly a hazard for women such as Anne Cobbie.

Many poems, plays and other writing of the time refer to the hard life of prostitutes, often ill and with broken health by their 30s.

Pregnancy would also be a hazard, and a recorded example of a half African child abandoned at nearby Somerset House in 1626, could be symptomatic of this danger. Given the timing and location of this, it’s just possible that the baby was actually Anne’s.

Were there other Black Prostitutes?

An examination of the Bridewell Prison records by Professor Duncan Salkeld reveals that there were few Black and African prostitutes, disproving the assumption that Black prostitutes were prevalent in Tudor and Stuart London.

In fact there is more evidence in the Bridewell cases of African men visiting English prostitutes in this period. This is an interesting indication that these men had enough disposable income to spend in this way.

Comparisons between the Tudor and Stuart Period, and the Eighteenth Century

Anne Cobbie was unusual for this period, though the numbers of Black prostitutes or sex workers would increase over the following two centuries.

In a play of 1658, a character described as a ‘wencher’ boasts that he has ‘tasted . . . of all complexions, from the white flaxen to the tawny-moor’.

In reflecting on the life of Anne Cobbie, we need to take care that we are not reading backwards from the 18th century when black prostitutes or sex workers are much more frequently found in the records.

One notable example in 18th Century London was ‘Black Harriott’.

She was an enslaved African woman working as a prostitute in the 1770s with a prestigious client list of MPs and prominent men. Records tell us that she was born and later enslaved on the coast of Guinea in West Africa and taken to Jamaica where she was sold to an English plantation owner.

Harriot gained an education, learning to read and write, before travelling to London. She became the plantation owner’s mistress and had two children with him. After his death from smallpox, she was left destitute in London, and to earn a living ran her own establishment.

However, as we have seen, records indicate that there were far fewer black prostitutes in the earlier Tudor and Stuart period in comparison with the 18th Century.

Anne Cobbie appears as an exception in the records of this period, rather than as part of a historical trend.