Lois Sturt : New Book By William Cross, FSA Scot

Lois Ina Sturt 1900-1937

LAST COPIES FOR SALE OF

An album of sexually explicit verses and jokes

From the Collection Of

Lois Ina Sturt and Reggie Pembroke

Compiled by William Cross, FSA Scot

The  material  comes  from the collection of Lois Sturt and Reggie Pembroke, two  minor aristocrats and sometime lovers.   The ditties  are what these two central characters laughed and sniggered about before, during and after making love.

The  lovers read  them out to each other in bed whilst they drew breath, enjoying an accompanying cigarette and a  glass of bubbly before returning to love-making.

Transcribed  from the records  in the National Library of Wales, the originals are in handwritten form but  some  pieces are typed up. They are  housed  in tatty exercise books, maintained by Lois,  with some  contributions from Reggie, usually appended to one of  his many  love letters to his “Darling Lois”. [i]

When the affair started  in 1919-20 Lois was aged 19, not ‘under age’, the age of consent  for heterosexuals at the time was 16. [ii]  Reggie was a  39- year-old married man.  

The relationship  lasted  several years. It staggered along after the open-secret  lovers were reported by informants to Reggie’s wife and Lois’s mother.

There were several long gaps in the romance,  sometimes of months at a time during the years it lasted.  It was finally fizzling out by 1925 and was over by the end  of  1926.  [iii]

To add a whimsical interpretation to this quaint and curious legacy of  Lois and Reggie there’s an array of adjoining  cartoons, photographs and drawings with the verses. These images are mostly  taken from contemporary sources of the same  time.

                                           Lois and Reggie in 1926

Reggie Pembroke was a Peer of the Realm, an Earl, a landowner,  a soldier and  politician. He was one of several men Lois favoured for having sex. Lois was the daughter of a Baron (an English Lord); her mother was an Earl’s daughter.

Neither Lois nor Reggie maintained exclusivity or fidelity during their affair. Reggie was handsome, self-centred, vain,  a womaniser and a  chronic gambler.  Although Lois was still a teenager and unmarried,  described as “more attractive than beautiful” [iv],  she was  an experienced lover and adored seducing older men. Mature men  were  more grateful than her clumsy male contemporaries, especially the 1920s crop of  ‘Hooray Henrys’.

The time setting for the smutty  material  is the period  c.1919-1925,  after the horrors of the  Great War. That was the age of the vulgar limerick and the saucy French postcards that were both humorous and rude. Lois and Reggie’s crop of poems etc celebrates  British smut.

Women’s rights were won in part in 1918 with an extension of the franchise and  the war between the sexes was played out in all kinds of spheres. In the verses etc. both sexes are equally lampooned.

Contact the compiler William Cross, by e-mail for further details.  The book is available on Amazon and e bay.

williecross@aol.com

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[i] Reggie was forever inventing new ways of addressing Lois.

[ii] The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 raised the age of consent for heterosexuals to 16.

[iii] There is a photograph in this book of Lois and Reggie taken together at a racecourse in November 1926  indicating they were still happy to be seen together. Reproduced above.

[iv] Attributed. Daily Mirror Review of one of Lois’s films.