

Transcribed from the 1813 J. Cook edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

                   [Picture: Public domain book cover]





                                   THE
                             PHŒNIX OF SODOM,
                                  OR THE
                          _Vere Street Coterie_.


                                * * * * *

                           BEING AN EXHIBITION
                                  OF THE
                            GAMBOLS PRACTISED
                                  BY THE
                             Ancient Lechers
                                    OF
                          _Sodom and Gomorrah_,
                    EMBELLISHED AND IMPROVED WITH THE
                            MODERN REFINEMENTS
                                    IN
                          Sodomitical Practices,

                          BY THE MEMBERS OF THE
              _Vere Street Coterie_, _of detestable memory_.

                                * * * * *

SOLD BY J. COOK, AT
AND TO BE HAD OF ALL THE BOOKSELLERS.

                                  1813.

            HOLLOWAY, PRINTER, ARTILLERY LANE, TOOLEY STREET.

                                * * * * *




THE
VERE STREET COTERIE,
OR
_The Phœnix of Sodom_.


I THINK it a duty I owe both the reader and myself, to account for my
acquaintance with any part of the disgraceful transactions disclosed in
the annexed pages.

Some months ago, when I was contemplating the most odious characters on
the list of Attorneys, to compose the Fifth Number of my Strictures on
the Practice of those voracious vultures, it came to my knowledge that an
Attorney named Wooley (with that alacrity with which crows fly to
carrion) had repaired to the different prisons, where those wretches
apprehended in Vere Street were committed, and, under pretence of
assisting the offenders obtaining their liberty, and enabling them to
escape justice, stripped them of every guinea they possessed, and,
indeed, of every article that would produce one at a pawnbroker’s.  I
therefore sent to Newgate, to learn from Cook, the landlord of the house,
whether my information was correct; who sent his wife to me, and related
a long history of the means and fallacious pretences by which he obtained
above thirty pounds from her, for the purpose of _bringing her husband
through_; that being the phrase of those fellows, who hang about prisons,
to tutor their new clients:—(_I have made use of the expression_ TUTOR,
_because there are degrees of iniquity_, _that the most atrocious
offenders accustomed to a long residence in the cells of Newgate have yet
to learn of a certain description of attorneys_;) in fine, after he had
exhausted every stratagem that his colleague the devil and himself could
devise to get money, and finding no more could be extracted from
nakedness, he became wholly negligent of his client; and in order to get
rid of Cook’s importunities, told him he must have fifty pounds more, or
he could not get him liberated.  On the woman prostrating (as the truth
was) that almost every article of wearing apparel had been disposed of to
raise the money he already had received, he very friendly suggested to
her, that a woman of her appearance might easily raise money _by putting
off One Pound Bank Notes that he could procure for her at Ten Shillings
each_! the woman could answer only with a groan—“I am in trouble enough
already!” and declined the mode he proposed, to procure liberty for her
husband, and a halter for herself!—Here the material part of the
negociation ended, and Cook was left by this virtuous one, et cetera,
without the least assistance at his trial, not even a guinea for council,
or the expence of a single sheet of paper.  In this dreadful situation, I
call it a dreadful situation, for whatever crimes a man be charged with,
he is certainly entitled to the benefit of a defence; especially when he
paid so amply for it: and though ultimately he was convicted, and
sentenced to the Pillory, I would ask, if, under all these circumstances,
his virtuous attorney ought not to have been sentenced to a
gibbet?—However, it does not appear to me, that had Wooley done all that
he was able, he could have saved Cook from his fate; for affidavit men
could be of no service: however, as in my next Number of Strictures I
have a very long chapter to bestow on the sympathetic feelings, and
matchless integrity of this man, in an hundred other instances equally
enormous; I shall for the present drop the subject, having afforded my
readers a trifling shred, or splinter, of his great stock of virtue.

It will be necessary here to correct a false opinion that is gone abroad
respecting the nature of Cook’s offence.—It is generally believed, that
he was convicted of Sodomy: but the fact is, that he was neither
convicted, or even indicted for that offence, but for keeping a house of
resort, or rendezvous for such detestable wretches to meet at.—I have
thought it proper, nay just, to make this distinction, to lessen in some
measure the horror that the public in general have felt against him.

My original inquiry into the conduct of