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.

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