18. "Dilly Boys", Piccadilly Circus, Westminster

18. "Dilly Boys", Piccadilly Circus, Westminster

18. "Dilly Boys", Piccadilly Circus, Westminster

£40.00

£40.00

‘The Dilly’’, slang for Piccadilly Circus.

On the fringes of Soho, Piccadilly has long been London’s principle location for the illicit sale of sex. Before the existence of online dating apps and CCTV, young men would congregate and hustle along the ‘meat rack’; the railings that used to surround the statue of Eros, where they’d wait to be picked up.

Throughout history poverty has always been fertile ground for prostitution and many of the boys who ended up on the meat rack, from the time of Oscar Wilde in the 1880s through to the MP rent boy scandals of the 1980s, weren’t necessarily there by choice. Having run away from broken homes, most would have been vulnerable and underage, often ending up at the hands of a dark criminal underworld, procured by violent pimps before being whored out.

Print is 20 x 25cm, unframed, signed, numbered and comes with the above accompanying text.

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