Male Oratory and Female Prate: “Then Hush and Be an Angel Quite”

“A Just and Graceful Elocution”: Miscellanies and Sociable Reading

“…In the 1750s, oratory became the craze for tradesmen and apprentices who formed the amateur spouting clubs, which provided a responsive audience to aid the aspirant speaker. 7 The clubs were often located in the City of London, or on the edge of it, which suggests the trading and artisanal makeup of their membership: tradesmen, merchants, and apprentices, all eager to learn to read well. One satirical account described the most famous of these clubs, the Robin Hood Club in Butcher Row on the edge of Smithfield Market, as comprising Bakers, Shoemakers, Journeymen-Barbers, Fleet Parsons, Psalmsinging Clerks, and Apprentice-Boys, who every Monday Night make no inconsiderable Figure on the Side of Infidelity, and deliver their Sentiments in a Diction so pure, that few, if any, can tell what they drive at.…”