While walking around Farringdon/Smithfield last weekend we walked past a narrow winding street called "Cock Lane" (see historical photo above) we have a similarly named street in my local town and I'd always thought that it was associated with the medieval obsession with cock fighting, i.e. getting male chickens to scrap with each other while wearing sharp silver spurs, a horrible thought, but then again, who am I to judge the morals of my ancestors? (a fine subject for another post) Anyway, upon doing a bit of research I discovered that Cock Lane in London, back in the 14th century, was by designation of the authorities at that time the only place that prostitution could occur legally, anywhere else and you could be arrested.
Back in the day it was common for street names to carry the label of the profession of the people that resided there, for example, Fish Street, Silver Street, Pudding Lane etc. This has lead some to speculate that the term "cock" in this context didn't mean male chicken but the colloquial version, i.e. in modern parlance, "dick". The problem with this hypothesis is that that particular slang term for your "old man (insert whatever familiar term you have here!)" didn't originate until the 1600's. It would be a shame for such a smutty and frankly interesting story not to be true, so on a bit more digging you find that the slang term for penis in the 1300's was "pillicock" so it's still possible for the story to bear some veracity if the designation was in fact a shortening of this word.
In any case, it's fascinating that even street names in London are dripping with history, and wonderous to think about how many thousands of school children (and a few adults!) over the centuries have giggled about them as they passed by.
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