From a former stripper to a late-night drinking licence holder, we hear from women who were at the heart of Soho in its sleazy-glamorous heyday
In her cosy sitting room, overlooking one of Soho’s busier streets, Jean Jones (not her real name) begins to peel off an imaginary skirt. “Someone made it for me,” she says. “It was red, and it had loads of panels. I used to take each panel off one at a time, like this.” With a flick of her hand, she flings first one invisible bit of scarlet satin, and then another, over her shoulder. What about her top half? She laughs. “I’m not big-busted, so we didn’t make a big thing of that. I wore a bra, I think. It was probably a bit see-through, with sequins. My stage name was Lollipop Girl, after the song.” She hums the old hit, under her breath. “Everyone knew me. People in the street would shout it out: ‘Hello, Lollipop!’” Are any of the clubs where she used to work still in business? “Only Sunset Strip [on Dean Street]. You can’t miss it. It’s quite funny. I pass it every day, on my way to Tesco.”
Jean, a former stripper, is in her 80s now, though you wouldn’t necessarily know it to look at her. It’s not only that her back is still so straight, something she attributes to her dancing years. It’s more that, in spite of everything, her appetite for Soho life remains so undimmed. “It’s the people,” she says. “I look out of the window, and I see people. When I walk down the street, it’s still: ‘Hi, hi, hi!’” Is Soho a better place now than when she first came here, or has something been lost since Westminster council set about clearing it up and rents duly rocketed? “It’s not better, or worse. It’s just different. A lot of people are sentimental. They say: do you remember the old days? Well, I do remember. But we’re here now, and that’s what matters.” In any case, she was perfectly happy taking her clothes off for money. “The other girls… oh, they were lovely! Cockneys, black girls, white girls. We used to giggle together at the back, and the money was good. It was better than being a shop assistant, and you only had to work a few hours in the evening.”
