Sex Work in the American Revolution
Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society
History Hit
4.8 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2026
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Where the American War of Independence raged, the camp followers...followed.
Among them were sex workers, for both the American and British troops. What was life like inside army camps where sex workers mixed with wives, soldiers and generals? How did race and slavery factor into sex and sexuality in this time? And how did each side view queerness in the camps?
Joining Kate today is the wonderful historian and author, Professor John McCurdy, to take us back to this time.
This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.
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Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? |
| 0:03.2 | Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? |
| 0:06.8 | Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? |
| 0:10.8 | We'll sign up to History Hit, |
| 0:12.5 | where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, |
| 0:15.3 | as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, |
| 0:18.7 | plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric |
| 0:22.8 | Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore |
| 0:29.2 | the past. Just visit history hit.com forward slash subscribe. |
| 0:35.3 | Hello my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. How are you? It's so nice to see you again. Welcome back to Betwix the Sheets, the podcast where we get smutty and naughty, but we all pretend that we're learning things at the same time, so it's fine. But before we can do any of that, I do have to tell you, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults, about adult things, an and an adult way of covering arranged. All subjects used to be an adult too. |
| 0:55.0 | Right, proceed at your own caution. |
| 1:00.9 | It's 1776, and I've snuck into a British army camp just outside of New York. |
| 1:06.9 | The Revolutionary War is raging, and it seems like these Americans don't really want to be ruled by a king. |
| 1:13.7 | Huh, that's me just pausing here to let you fill in your own punchline. |
| 1:18.5 | But here amongst the British camps, as well as the men packed in tents, there are a few women here too. |
| 1:24.4 | These are the camp followers. |
| 1:27.0 | Some are the partners and wives of soldiers, some are here |
| 1:30.1 | to do laundry, some are here to wash socks, and some are here to sell sex. Sex work is a common |
| 1:36.5 | and often under-talked about feature of war, except for me, I talk about it a lot. And there was |
| 1:42.1 | a lot of it in the War of Independence. |
| 1:46.0 | Let me tell you. And we shall be exploring that and finding out |
| 1:48.2 | more. Let's do it. |
... |
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