Frying Pan Alley

Frying Pan Alley is a well known alley within what was once the poverty stricken Spitalfield area of East London. It's name derives from the number of Ironmongers who set up business here and whom hung frying pans outside their premises to denote their trade. The working class nature of the area is captured by Rowlandson in the left foreground by his depiction of a fish seller smoking a pipe. To the left we see a bawdy house, in the doorway of which a working girl kisses a sailor. In the foreground the main focus of the scene is a disagreement between an old woman on the right whom appears to be the bawd and a young lady on the left, possibly one of her girls.