Georgia Hardstark
speaker
4,112 appearances
38 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Feb 2025
Georgia Hardstark’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And he tells her that if she indeed is as poor as she says she is, he'll take care of her, protect her, and personally see that she never goes hungry again.
Yeah. Of course, from our vantage point, it's clear Mr. Caulfield is going to take advantage of Peg, but she's Peg's young, she's in dire straits. And this is what she later says in her memoirs, quote, "...there are many virtues which when carried beyond their due bounds degenerate into vices. One of those is gratitude."
The miseries I'd undergone were present to my mind, and he had promised he would screen me from their future approach. All these thoughts rushed at once into my mind, awakened my sincerest acknowledgements, and I esteemed it but a grateful return to promise all he requested. So that's just a fancy way of Higgs saying that she just decided to exchange sex for financial support from a man. Mm-hmm.
And why shouldn't she? She's already been taken advantage of by Mr. Dardis, suffered the miscarriage of their child, was discarded by him. Has nowhere to go. Yeah. She has been rejected by her own shitty abusive family. She's literally has nothing to lose. She's in her 20s. So she's like, why wouldn't I? Yeah. So she hooks up with Mr. Caulfield. She gets pregnant. Right.
He vows to continue taking care of her and the baby, even after he marries a different woman. He actually sticks to this promise, though. He provides for Peg and their son, but now Peg is considered a quote-unquote fallen woman. So she spends her nights visiting Dublin's many taverns and music halls.
She meets other quote-unquote fallen women, and they teach her the ropes of becoming a professional high-end sex worker. And just like that, Peg starts making her own income on top of the financial support that she's getting from Mr. Caulfield. But in a tragic echo of her past, this baby that she has with Mr. Caulfield also passes away. And when that baby dies, Mr. Caulfield cuts her off.
He learns that she's been seeing other clients and he's basically like, that's that. So yet again, Peg is alone in the world. But unlike last time, She now has her own way of making money. So she keeps working and she keeps partying at pubs and looking for new Johns to keep herself afloat. And one day she meets a well-to-do man she identifies as a Mr. Leeson. It's Neom's great-great-grandfather.
Lisa, Liam, Lisa. Not Liam. Liam. Liam. So Mr. Leeson becomes infatuated with Peg. And so he moves her into his lavish country estate in Kildare. Okay. You're right. Things are looking up. He makes her feel like royalty. And because he does all this for her, she sees fewer and fewer clients. Okay. And this kind of helps her maintain the image that she's just keeping herself only for Mr. Leeson.
At one point, she even takes his last name, going by either Peg or Margaret Leeson. But she is not in love with him. She, like many of us, has fallen in love with Dublin's nightlife. That's what she's really about. She's grateful, of course, for everything this man's done for her. ¶¶
She's a businesswoman now, and she's sick of the double standard that women have to remain chaste while men can just go out and do whatever they want. When she expresses this to Mr. Leeson, he proposes to her, hoping that marriage will set Peg straight, but she turns him down. And she'll later write... Yikes. Okay. Mm-hmm. And then I wrote, Sounds like Peg's been on my side of TikTok.
But like having this opinion, especially writing about it in the 18th century, being bold enough and like brave enough to put it on paper is revolutionary. She is truly a badass. Totally. Which is like kind of the result of tragedy. Like when you go through bad shit, yes, it's hard. Yes, there's trauma. And also... Your spine gets real thick. You get real brave. Resilience is a motherfucker.
Yeah. So, of course, when Peg turns down Mr. Leeson's marriage proposal, their business relationship ends, too. And so Peg goes back to her old routine, trying to see as many Johns, you know, as she wants, basically earning her own money and partying in Dublin. And then... She ends up meeting a John that is named Buck Lawless.
Which is hot. And old Buck becomes one of Peg's regulars. But she actually soon finds herself falling head over heels for him.
Hmm.
And it's actually the real thing this time. In the initial bliss of their relationship, Peg remains faithful to Buck and she stops sex work altogether. But her past is too much for Buck to handle emotionally. He starts getting jealous anytime he sees Peg even talking to another man. which then leads to bickering, which turns into intense fighting. And soon Buck starts physically abusing Peg.
And it doesn't stop even after he knows she is pregnant with his baby. And at one point he beats her so badly that she has a miscarriage. Oh my God. But she stays with him because this is kind of what she knows, right? And she ends up getting pregnant with him again. So it's just seems like she is in another impossible situation with a man.
But luck strikes when Buck Lawless, who is seeking new financial opportunities, decides to set out for America. And so he leaves her. And suddenly she's free from his tyrannical reign and she's left with their daughter and to live the life she wants to live. Buck has promised that he's going to send money once he gets to America. No money ever comes.
So she goes back to the one thing she can depend on, sex work. Yeah. But now Peg isn't just looking for a stable income. She wants a higher income. So this is now the mid 1770s. And she, Peg and her friend and fellow sex worker, Sally Hayes, decide to team up and start their own high end brothel. Okay.
So instead of settling for cheap rent in a poorer neighborhood to work out of, the women pull all their funds together and spring for a nice place in a wealthy neighborhood. Similar care is taken in selecting the other ladies who will be working there. They all must be beautiful, well-dressed, have enough of an education to carry on a conversation about either art or politics or music.
When Johns visit the house, they're served champagne and treated to a full night of partying and entertainment. So Peg and Sally are offering a much more complete experience rather than just cheap, fast sex. And their brothel immediately gains a reputation among Dublin's wealthy men for being a cut above. And business starts booming. And Pig and Sally spend their money like crazy.
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