Newcastle's Old 'Red Light District'

The thoroughfare now known as Pandon has been modernised beyond recognition in recent years. It is the short street a little to the north-west of the Milk Market area, home to several multi-storey car parks and a selection of up-market eateries. But the course of the road – formerly known as Pandon Street – goes back a long way. Around the time of Mackenzie’s 1827 history of the town, though, it seems to have been going through a rough patch...

Pandon Street leads from the foot of the Wall Knoll, eastward, to the head of Coxon’s Chare. It is a narrow, winding, dirty street, and appears to have been called, in old times, Crosswell-gate. According to tradition, the opulent, pious, and munificent Roger Thornton lived in this street; though now it is generally shunned by respectable people, not only on account of the dirtiness of the passage, but as being inhabited by many of those coarse and impudent wenches, called, in these refined times, Cyprian nymphs, who subsist by administering to the gross appetites of those who are unfortunately strangers to the exquisite pleasures arising from a correct and refined taste, and blind to the disgrace, pain, and disappointment which result from deviating from the smooth paths of moral rectitude.

As you can imagine, such areas of ill repute were many, varied and prone to ‘wander’ over time. Previously, Mackenzie pointed out, it was the narrow chares a few yards to the west of Pandon Street which played host to the ladies of the night. Roughly speaking, Plumber Chare ran along what is now King Street (that’s the one offering the classic view of All Saints’ Church from the Quayside) ...

Plumber Chare was noted, a few years ago, as the receptacle of Cyprian nymphs, whose blandishments were of the most coarse and vulgar description. Indeed, most of these dark lanes were inhabited by “very dangerous, though not very tempting females.” But the character of these lanes has been much altered in late years; most of the dwelling houses having been converted into granaries, warehouses, maltings, breweries, etc.

[article taken from Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Fragments of the Past, vol.1 (see left-hand column)]