- Header
- Mrs Phillips
- Also known as
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Mrs Phillips
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primary name: Phillips
- Details
- individual; manufacturer/factory; British; Female
- Address
- 5 Orange Court, Leicester Fields, London
- Biography
- Condom maker in London. Trade card in Heal Collection (Heal,60.8) advertises "Mrs. Phillips's Warehouse..." Heal's annotations on mount: "1817 Directory gives a W. Phillips, fan maker & hardwareman at 16 Brydges St., Covent Garden.". There is an advertisement with a much more extensive description of her recently opened Orange Court shop in the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection, Rubenstein Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Duke University (item 4441).
Nigel Tattersfield (email June 2021): Mrs Phillips was a considerable condom-maker, whose workshop / warehouse was at the Sign of the Fan in Orange Court, near what is now Leicester Square. Since Mrs Phillips’ premises had two entrances / exits, customers of a modest character, who may have included happily-married men who forbore to put their wives through the perils of repeat pregnancies, could rely upon a measure of confidentiality when calling. For very shy customers, and those residing out of town, she ran a discreet mail-order business.
‘Mother’ Phillips, as she was sometimes called, was a legend in her own lifetime and references to her abound, although rarely recognised for what they are. The honorific ‘Mrs’ did not indicate that she was necessarily married but that she was a businesswoman, the mistress of her establishment, with at least a couple of employees. Her condoms, sometimes called 'implements of safety', were exported in substantial quantities; see the satirist James Gillray’s etching, 'A Sale of English-Beauties, in the East Indies'; BM Satires 7014, BM 1851, 0901.295.
