Sir John Gonson was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 judge

Judge

A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...

 for nearly 50 years in the early 18th century, serving as a Justice of the Peace

Justice of the Peace

A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...

 and Chairman of the Quarter Sessions

Quarter Sessions

The Courts of Quarter Sessions or Quarter Sessions were local courts traditionally held at four set times each year in the United Kingdom and other countries in the former British Empire...

 for the City of Westminster

City of Westminster

The City of Westminster is a London borough occupying much of the central area of London, England, including most of the West End. It is located to the west of and adjoining the ancient City of London, directly to the east of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and its southern boundary...

. Gonson was a supporter of the Society for the Reformation of Manners

Society for the Reformation of Manners

The Society for the Reformation of Manners was founded in the Tower Hamlets area of London in 1691. Its espoused aims were the suppression of profanity, immorality, and other lewd activities in general, and of brothels and prostitution in particular....

, and was noted for his enthusiasm for raiding brothel

Brothel

Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...

s and for passing harsh sentences.

Gonson appears in contemporary court reports and newspaper articles, but is best known for having been depicted twice in A Harlot's Progress

A Harlot's Progress

A Harlot's Progress is a series of six paintings and engravings by William Hogarth. The series shows the story of a young woman, Mary Hackabout, who arrives in London from the country and becomes a prostitute...

, William Hogarth

William Hogarth

William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...

's series of paintings from 1731 and subsequent engravings from 1732. Gonson first appears in plate 3, leading three armed bailiff

Bailiff

A bailiff is a governor or custodian ; a legal officer to whom some degree of authority, care or jurisdiction is committed...

s into the boudoir of the protagonist, Moll Hackabout. The character of Moll is based on a real-life prostitute, Kate Hackabout, who was apprehended by Gonson in 1730 and sentenced to hard labour for keeping a disorderly house

Disorderly house

In English criminal law a disorderly house is a house in which the conduct of its inhabitants is such as to become a public nuisance, or outrages public decency, or tends to corrupt or deprave, or injures the public interest; or a house where persons congregate to the probable disturbance of the...

. Gonson appears again in plate 4, shown hanging from the gallows

Gallows

A gallows is a frame, typically wooden, used for execution by hanging, or by means to torture before execution, as was used when being hanged, drawn and quartered...

 in graffiti

Graffiti

Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

, while Moll beats hemp

Hemp

Hemp is mostly used as a name for low tetrahydrocannabinol strains of the plant Cannabis sativa, of fiber and/or oilseed varieties. In modern times, hemp has been used for industrial purposes including paper, textiles, biodegradable plastics, construction, health food and fuel with modest...

 in Bridewell Prison.

Gonson was mentioned twice in Satire IV of Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

's Satires of John Donne

John Donne

John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...

, in Essay on Man, mentioning "the storm of Gonson's lungs" and "Peace, fools, or Gonson will for Papists seize you, If once he catch you at your Jesu! Jesu!". He has been called the scourge of Gin Lane or of Drury Lane

Drury Lane

Drury Lane is a street on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of Camden and the southern part in the City of Westminster....

, and wrote, in 1728,
Gonson not only used the rod of the law to fight what he saw as the evils of immorality in London. He is listed as a founding governor of the Foundling Hospital

Foundling Hospital

The Foundling Hospital in London, England was founded in 1741 by the philanthropic sea captain Thomas Coram. It was a children's home established for the "education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children." The word "hospital" was used in a more general sense than it is today, simply...

 in that charity's royal charter

Royal Charter

A royal charter is a formal document issued by a monarch as letters patent, granting a right or power to an individual or a body corporate. They were, and are still, used to establish significant organizations such as cities or universities. Charters should be distinguished from warrants and...

 of 1739. The first effort of its kind in the country, the Foundling Hospital was a home for abandoned children

Child abandonment

Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting them. Causes include many social and cultural factors as well as mental illness. An abandoned child is called a foundling .-Causes:Poverty is often a...

, many of them children of prostitutes. Hogarth was also a governor of the Foundling Hospital from its foundation.